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Loom (Ukiyo at Home)
Nov. 6th, 2020 09:06 amGrab your oil lamps and your most trusted companions for treachery is afoot!
It is with a heavy heart I must say this is not a story for the faint of heart. We will be uncovering the tale of three orphans and their heart-racing escape from one Cottonsworth Mill. A mill filled with awful mechanical contraptions, mysterious spirits and some Wrongly Educated Adults and their Dubious treatment of Very Smart Children.
This Ukiyo At Home calls upon grown-ups and children alike to collaborate and solve puzzles to help the Cottonsworth Children out of a Very Very Bad Place. If you like Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and A Series of Unfortunate Events… grab your oil lamp, button in your braces, pocket some bread – things are about to get very interesting at the Cottonsworth Mills!
Ukiyo is a Melbourne escape room company who have a room called The Crumbling Prince based on Zelda games and anime, where players each wear a mask with a unique special power, which is top of my list to visit when travel is a thing again. During lockdowns they have run three on-line events, all designed for groups and very cheap ($AU5 per person); this is the second I’ve played and the first I’ve finished. The other one, Stawk Pine Falls was Twin Peaks-inspired and has you as an investigator sent to an odd small town to investigate a missing person, with YouTube channels and radio shows and new content every day. I was doing this with a friend and we managed the first 4 days or so (of ten) before getting overwhelmed with work and not having enough time to catch up; however, hopefully they’re redoing it at the end of the year. Very much internet-based as a puzzler; there was a particularly nice one using different versions of the same document in gdocs. I didn’t do Bird Cage, which they compared to Stranger Things , which I also haven’t seen, but this one looked cool and also shorter – three parts, the longest of which was about two hours.
There are short video-clips but this is basically an IF game. There are some illustrations (which may contain clues) but all the interaction is via text, clicking, or inputting speech. It is also a game that relies on the players working as a team. You play as one of three characters – Sam, Shu Fang, or Clare – and all three characters need to be there and active to solve the puzzles, as the information you need (a code word, a location, the right lever to pull) may only be apparent to one of the other characters. There are other limitations as well – Sam is illiterate and Shu Fang is colour-blind, so a puzzle involving reading or colour recognition has to be handed over to another player for help. We did this on phone chat, talking through our puzzles and offering up suggestions (or just wailing when we got stuck). It is possible to play solo but they suggest using a different browser for each character to reduce confusion (and I expect there would be a lot!). We played on three separate nights.
The team aspect worked really well. The game has no way of knowing if other characters are playing – it’s not live and you don’t register – but it feels as though they’re there. When you get to a point where all three characters have to act, it asks you to check if everyone’s ready before clicking – and you do, even though it doesn’t make any difference. At one point my character drops some tools down a shaft to another character – and it felt as though I had, even though their character would only get them once they were at the right stage in the game, regardless of what I’d done.
The puzzles are also themed to each character (trading, mechanical, and cooking) and they were all fair, and nicely done; when I got stuck it was usually because I hadn’t checked whether something I’d done had opened up a new dialogue option. The voice-over was a bit too Stephen Fry-lite and twee, but it works for the story and there are some really neat moments. I definitely intend to do more of their rooms, hopefully eventually in person.
It is with a heavy heart I must say this is not a story for the faint of heart. We will be uncovering the tale of three orphans and their heart-racing escape from one Cottonsworth Mill. A mill filled with awful mechanical contraptions, mysterious spirits and some Wrongly Educated Adults and their Dubious treatment of Very Smart Children.
This Ukiyo At Home calls upon grown-ups and children alike to collaborate and solve puzzles to help the Cottonsworth Children out of a Very Very Bad Place. If you like Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and A Series of Unfortunate Events… grab your oil lamp, button in your braces, pocket some bread – things are about to get very interesting at the Cottonsworth Mills!
Ukiyo is a Melbourne escape room company who have a room called The Crumbling Prince based on Zelda games and anime, where players each wear a mask with a unique special power, which is top of my list to visit when travel is a thing again. During lockdowns they have run three on-line events, all designed for groups and very cheap ($AU5 per person); this is the second I’ve played and the first I’ve finished. The other one, Stawk Pine Falls was Twin Peaks-inspired and has you as an investigator sent to an odd small town to investigate a missing person, with YouTube channels and radio shows and new content every day. I was doing this with a friend and we managed the first 4 days or so (of ten) before getting overwhelmed with work and not having enough time to catch up; however, hopefully they’re redoing it at the end of the year. Very much internet-based as a puzzler; there was a particularly nice one using different versions of the same document in gdocs. I didn’t do Bird Cage, which they compared to Stranger Things , which I also haven’t seen, but this one looked cool and also shorter – three parts, the longest of which was about two hours.
There are short video-clips but this is basically an IF game. There are some illustrations (which may contain clues) but all the interaction is via text, clicking, or inputting speech. It is also a game that relies on the players working as a team. You play as one of three characters – Sam, Shu Fang, or Clare – and all three characters need to be there and active to solve the puzzles, as the information you need (a code word, a location, the right lever to pull) may only be apparent to one of the other characters. There are other limitations as well – Sam is illiterate and Shu Fang is colour-blind, so a puzzle involving reading or colour recognition has to be handed over to another player for help. We did this on phone chat, talking through our puzzles and offering up suggestions (or just wailing when we got stuck). It is possible to play solo but they suggest using a different browser for each character to reduce confusion (and I expect there would be a lot!). We played on three separate nights.
The team aspect worked really well. The game has no way of knowing if other characters are playing – it’s not live and you don’t register – but it feels as though they’re there. When you get to a point where all three characters have to act, it asks you to check if everyone’s ready before clicking – and you do, even though it doesn’t make any difference. At one point my character drops some tools down a shaft to another character – and it felt as though I had, even though their character would only get them once they were at the right stage in the game, regardless of what I’d done.
The puzzles are also themed to each character (trading, mechanical, and cooking) and they were all fair, and nicely done; when I got stuck it was usually because I hadn’t checked whether something I’d done had opened up a new dialogue option. The voice-over was a bit too Stephen Fry-lite and twee, but it works for the story and there are some really neat moments. I definitely intend to do more of their rooms, hopefully eventually in person.
