Shocked! The first two-player game in rust lake series is so fun?

Recently, rust lake's new work "thepastwithin" was finally released, and fans were going crazy waiting for it. However, when I got it, it made me feel unsatisfactory. The biggest problem was that there were only two chapters, which were too short to play. If I had ten chapters like Paradise Island, I would definitely feel great. Of course, this is a joke. As a two-person game test by rust lake Company, thepastwithin will definitely not be too long. However, I believe that with this attempt, their company will bring more excellent two-player games.

excellent elements of double play

I can feel that many designs in the game are serving double play, and the shapes of different puzzle organs are very different, and the tips are straightforward, so the narrator can easily describe the tips he sees, and the solver can easily find the corresponding organs. Moreover, the graphic symbols in the puzzle are very different, concise and easy to describe, such as a horizontal line with a dot, a circle with a cross, etc. When the descriptor describes one symbol, the solver will not think of another symbol. When it comes to color, we don't use purple and pink, blue and cyan, which are easily confused.

For many two-player double-ended games, two players must keep the network smooth at all times, otherwise it is easy to drag each other down in some operations that need close cooperation. However, thepastwithin is not a real online game. After my personal test, all the passwords in the game are fixed. The big difference between butterfly and bee mode is that the passwords are different, but the passwords are the same every time I play the same mode. In other words, if the player plays according to the video of other players, it is also possible to clear customs. Even the tip at the end of each chapter that "two people hold a place for 1 seconds at the same time" is actually bluffing. Just press it for 1 seconds normally. This is different from another two-person puzzle game wewerehere, which really needs to be online, and one person can see the movement of the other person in the game.

The blood pump puzzle can be said to be the part that two people need to cooperate most. I think the basis of the idea here should be that two people press the blood pump in turn within a limited time, but in the actual game process, it may be impossible to detect whether the other person is pressing in time because of network problems. At this time, the clever design of the game appeared: there is a screen and many buttons with different patterns on the blood pump device. Every time the blood pump is pressed, a pattern will be displayed on the screen. One party should inform the other party of this pattern in time, and the other party should press this button and press the blood pump within a limited time, and then inform the former of the new pattern on its screen, and so on. The operation of the player pressing the button is equivalent to pressing the blood pump instead of the other party. That is to say, whether the opponent presses the blood pump is not informed by the network to the game program, but by the player himself. On the one hand, it solves the network problem, and on the other hand, it makes the game more puzzle-solving and interactive.

The past and the future with their own characteristics

The two players play the past Rose and the future Rose respectively. They take turns to face the 3D box and the 2D scene. There is a mirror in each of the two 2D scenes, from which we can clearly see their images. The former is a girl in a long black dress, and the latter is an old woman in a white coat. In contrast, there is also a father Albert in each of the two scenes. The past is the dead Albert's body, and the future is the young Albert who has completed the resurrection, which can not help but make people feel the reincarnation of fate.

past and future institutions also have different styles. In the past, most of the institutions were living things, such as clocks, heaters, candlesticks, etc., while in the future, most of the institutions were scientific research supplies, such as computers, blackboards, beakers, etc. The former can feel that Albert used all the limited resources at hand to make this box that can communicate with the future, and let Rose continue the rest of the work; Rose has been devoted to resurrecting her father all her life, and finally made a resurrection device in the laboratory. At this time, she has sufficient resources to complete the final ceremony, and she also knows how to cooperate with her past self (meaning that the player understands the basic play of the game after playing < P >).

The past and future boxes also have their own characteristics. In the future, the LCD screen will be used to display information in the box. Those pixel text patterns have an Atari game style, and the mechanisms on them are also quite electronic, such as floppy disks and fuses. In the past, the box used a piece of paper on a reel to display information, which seemed to be printed. The operation buttons were also like buttons on a typewriter, and the mechanisms on them were also mechanical, such as clockwork and gears. Even if one person operates two perspectives at the same time (yes, it is me), it will not feel repetitive.

and

are also related. At the beginning of the game, there will always be a mouse running by the box of the future players, but when it comes to < P >, the mouse will run around the whole house and even provide important props for the players. In the past, players created a corrupt soul at the end of

, commonly known as big black, but when

, you can see that big black crawls darkly in the distant background.

Small details echoing the previous story

The story of The Pasttwithin is weak. Although there are a lot of words, they are basically describing the content of puzzles, and there is little information in the story. For the old fans of rust lake series, the whole story can be summarized in one sentence: the past and future Rose cooperated to resurrect their father Albert. But after all, this is a two-player game. There must be some players who are forced to play and don't know these two people at all.

according to the game plot of RustyLake:Roots, the ultimate goal of the Vanderboom family is to develop the elixir of life. After two ancestors drank the potion, one succeeded in immortality, but the other died. Their descendants have to constantly collect sacrifices to revive their ancestors. Of course, this has little to do with the plot of thepastwithin. In 1867, the Vanderboom family gave birth to three children, two men and one woman. Albert was the youngest of them, with a natural birthmark on his head.

People with special looks are always attacked. One day in 1876, three children were playing together. In order to compete for a butterfly, Albert was first pushed under a tree by his sister, and then he was injured by his brother's beehive with a slingshot, leaving a ferocious scar on his face that would never heal. Butterflies hurt Albert's heart and bees hurt his body, which is also the origin of bee mode and butterfly mode, and the difference in slide mechanism. However, his brother and sister not only did not repent, but even laughed at his embarrassment. From then on, his heart was full of hatred and he vowed to retaliate against his brother and sister.

In the autumn of p>1891, 24-year-old Albert pushed Frank, his sister's child, into a well, causing her sister to hang herself sadly in 1896. Then he fell in love with his brother's wife, but he was afraid to express his love. In 194, he killed his brother and sister-in-law with a voodoo doll because of love and hate, and in 199, he used alchemy to make a baby, namely Rose, from his sister-in-law and his own cells.

However, Frank, my sister's child, did not die. He lived in the well for 33 years. In 1924, Rose followed her fate and rescued Frank. Two years later, in 1926, when Frank played chess with Albert, Frank strangled Albert and took Albert's brain as a sacrifice. This was Albert's life.

This information is not a simple background board, and various related designs can be seen in thepastwithin. From the very beginning, we can know that the time when people in the past lived was in 1926, when Albert had just died and his body was still fresh, so he could poke blood out of his nose. Albert in the coffin has white hair, which corresponds to the appearance when he was killed by Frank in rust lake: The Root. There is a thin scar on his head, which is the scar left after taking away his brain.

There is a photo in his chest pocket, which may be his sister-in-law or daughter. These are the two people he loves most in his life. In the process of getting ears, we can also briefly review Albert's life with slides, and the chessboard mechanism also corresponds to his last game with Frank. The voodoo doll that murdered my brother and sister-in-law also appeared in the game flow. Albert took one eye of each of them as a sacrifice, and "thepastwithin" just inserted the needle in the doll's eye.

Summary

Although the puzzle of The Pasttwithin has been greatly improved for the two-person mode, it has not affected the overall interest and difficulty, and it can be said that it is as excellent as ever. The plot also closely echoes the previous work, and it is too rigorous to pick a fault, which also makes people look forward to the next plot. If you are a rust lake fan who hasn't played this game, I highly recommend you to buy it. If you are a passer-by forcibly dragged by your friends to form a team, you may as well start to understand the whole rust lake series.