Memory Of A Broken Dimension

[TurboPubx-16]

http://www.datatragedy.com/wipmoabd/

 

FAQ

 

1. What is it? 

It's an indie game. Jeff Gerstmann described it an aesthetic experiment.

 

2. What do I need to play it?

A web browser with the Unity plugin, which is provided on the page above.

 

3. How long will it take?

Ten to twenty minutes.

 

3. Of the Idle Thumbs cast, who is most likely to love this game?

Steve Gaynor.

 

4. Can I play it full screen?

Right-click, full screen. 

 

5. What is the biggest mind-fuck someone could experience after playing through this game?

 

https://twitter.com/festedafool/status/326131884394438656/photo/1

 

https://twitter.com/festedafool/status/326132348146028544/photo/1

[Joewintergreen]

I guess I finished it?

That was stressful as fuck. I think it is vitally important that nobody ever play it in the oculus rift

[Reyturner]

I walked up the thing and got a blue screen... did I win?

 

inb4 "this isn't even a game"

[Joewintergreen]

What even is game

[TychoCelchuuu]

I remember seeing a trailer for this. I will leave this until I'm like, super relaxed because I feel like it's going to make me tense up.

[Nachimir]

Here's a mini review:




I place terminal trope combined with "guess the secret word" on a lower rung than hidden object games.

Edit: I'm past it now, but I didn't realise until this just how seriously I fucking hate fake hacking games.

Edit 2: In principle I should like this. I've seen the developer talk about it and thought it looked really interesting. In practice, I'm just finding it really, really dull. I have the same awful feeling about Miegekure. It's an interesting prototype, but it feels like I'm interacting with a completely arbitrary system rather than something I can figure out and gain some sense of competence with. Like, it's a really clever and aesthetically interesting version of a magic eye picture or a floaty pen.

 

Edit 3: I hope I'm being unfair. The terminal thing completely framed my experience of it with a mixture of frustration and boredom.

[Joewintergreen]

You got

past the command prompt, right?

 

I actually had trouble with that for a while too. Once you type "dir" and it works, it's simple, but "dir" seems to only work 50% of the times you type it, so I fucked around for ages even though the first thing I typed was the correct thing

[Nachimir]

Yes, I got to the bit after that I've seen demoed.

 

Aesthetically, I like it; mechanically I don't.

It feels like a load of three dimensional hunting and pecking rather than a comprehensible system.

[Reyturner]

I had about 7 moments of pure discovery playing through, figuring out how to

do things, go places and track my progress

which I actually really enjoyed. It demonstrates how much more rewarding games are when you allow players to discover what they're supposed to do

(even if it does rely on your knowledge of other command prompts and first person perspective games)

.

 

Not to mention that there just aren't enough single player games these days that give players the opportunity to feel smugly superior over other players who don't get it, a feature sorely lacking in most modern games 

 

I do feel bad for the Millennial who play this never having had to use a DOS prompt before.

[Nachimir]

there just aren't enough single player games these days that give players the opportunity to feel smugly superior over other players who don't get it, a feature sorely lacking in most modern games

 

Well before you get all superior over that and write me off as an inferior species, *cough*.

 

I have genuine bones with this game.

[Reyturner]

I'm interested in your assertion that it is arbitrary.

Everything you do works consistently and provides immediate feedback.

[youmeyou]

Can you do anything once you dive into the white room? Is there really a puzzle here? Goddamn, I suck at video games if so.

[Reyturner]

Can you do anything once you dive into the white room? Is there really a puzzle here? Goddamn, I suck at video games if so.

yes

[Patrick R]

Ugh, couldn't be more lost. My complete DOS knowledge was getting Reader Rabbit to run back in 1993. Memory Of A Broken Dimension does not play Reader Rabbit.

[youmeyou]

patrick i was lost too.

 

type dir and it'll show you a list of runnable files. play around with that. also don't add 'exe' to your file commands, had to look up a dos how-to for that one.

[youmeyou]

ok

Figured out the first room, that was a neat discovery. The second room has me completely stumped, however, and my head hurts so I'll have to return to this later.

 

Besides the frustrating obfuscation of needing to know console commands, I'm digging this a lot so far. Reminds me of Fez/Antichamber in the manner in which it displays puzzles that can only be solved by looking at them a certain way. Really sweet aesthetic too, they should have someone playing this at electronic shows.

[Merus]

I tried this in an art gallery once and didn't get very far, though I'm willing to accept that I wasn't concentrating properly due to the environment and the promise of JS Joust later.

 

Edit: this version has a room at the start that introduces the basic mechanic, making it a lottttttttt more decipherable.

[BadPixel]

This game is FUCKING AWESOME!

 

Once you get past the fake cmd screen which isn't that hard after you type dir, it basically tells you what to do. After that I had an amazing time figuring out the rules to the crazy world of static and broken landscape. I didn't see anything recognisable as the couch in the promo video I saw which makes me think there might be more to discover. Rest assured though, there is a set of mechanics at play and nothing is worthless information.

 

COMPREHENSIVE GAME WRECKING SPOILERS BELOW

A list of what I have discovered.

 

 

Getting past the CMD:

Type remote

Type voidscan

Type dive

done

 

If any command doesn't work, type it again, it seems like the first command always fails.

 

1. You need to use parallax to form objects, clicking brings them into existence

2. There are little line poking out of the ground that have a vector marked on them with a second line pointing in the direction you need to look to form a piece of landscape.

3. As you do this the numbers on the bottom left of your screen decrease.

4. Each room has a sector number in the style of a memory address, I don't know enough about computer science to know if it is genuine memory addresses but they are shown on the top left, if you take note of the landmarks where you are and what sector number is, it can help. You sometimes end up transported to higher up in the same sector.

5. Certain sectors seem to have nothing in them except doorways to other sectors. Maybe I haven't explored enough.

6. Blank walls seem to be doorways to other rooms, grid-marked ones will just warp the screen and plonk you back in the current one.

7. There are doorways on walls marked by numbers, they usually take you to the opposite wall. (the one behind you)

8. There is a logic to how sectors are linked I just haven't found it yet, OxCNTR seems to link to more than any other sector, leading me to think the system is set out in a large grid of rooms with doorways between them. OxCNTR meaning Center.

9. I have a suspicion that there may be 15 rooms, plus OxRTRN OxCNTR and OxDISTOR (names might be wrong but in my head that is OxReturn OxCenter and OxDistortion

10. I believe further secrets lie in OxDISTOR when other conditions are met, because you can sometimes see a kind of tower or statue like object that can't be made solid. This is the only room I have seen it.

[Merus]

I did finish it, it's reasonably short once you've got the basic gist of it. I enjoyed the later sections where the places to look aren't marked and you have to get a sense of where to stand by examining the mass of polygons and working out where they'd likely line up.

 

I think maybe it's too obtuse for its own good? There's no real puzzle involved in room navigation, for instance, and it just obscures the core mechanics. I wasn't fond of the distortion room either, given that it doesn't actually have much meaning and is kind of unpleasant to navigate. I think the bootup at the start is also pretty obtuse; you'd get the same thematic content just by writing status lines on the screen and you wouldn't turn away people who haven't used a command line recently.

 

I can imagine this being pretty interesting on a larger scale.

[BadPixel]

Conversely, I think the distortion room has something in it, I just don't know what, maybe the other rooms create it or maybe it requires certain conditions to be set. I was definitely able to create a tower in there. 

I assume it's because it is a demo that I can't get any more out of this, I've played it 3 times now and I have a crazy diagram on my desk of how the rooms connect.

 

EDIT: I thought maybe after the "win" screen you could dive again and get a different area or something, it seems like this isn't the case unless there are more commands to run that I don't know about.

 

More game wrecking analysis below.

Basically 0xC, CNTR, 0xB, DISOR are in a line we can call north/south, 0xA and 0xD are to the east/west of CNTR. If you keep track of which way you are facing, based on looking through the first door as you enter it and calling that north, you can very easily navigate the system. If you solve all possible north south rooms, all you have to do is take 0xD and follow it on as you go through all other sectors at higher elevations.  DISOR is the only area with what I think is an optional viewpoint. 

All transitions are two-way doors.

 

P.S I love this game, I really want a full version now.