Mazer II: Won

When we last left off I was stuck trying to get past some starfish which I just can't figure out. I've been thinking about how I can solve it a lot more than actually trying to solve it. The problem is that this really isn't the kind of game where that strategy is rewarded. To go off somewhere and think on the matter incidentally and then return generally works if you've been presented with all the possible actions you can take. Yet a game that doesn't do this still has things I can do. Actions which, even if I don't understand how they could work, could work. There are no actions I haven't taken but could, at least not the kind that are so bordering on desperation that they're practically insane.

For instance, I could start shooting random walls with random kinds of energy. I have no reason this could work. There's nothing visible for me to shoot. Except...hang on, maybe the bars block my shot and I need to try spraying and praying past the starfishs? Maybe I didn't try that already? The bars don't block my shots, so that isn't it. Spraying and praying won't work, if I can reach something on the other side, surely I'm not just supposed to just shoot it in effective darkness? So I go around, again. I didn't check the walls, but then, I assumed I could spot any signs there was something unusual there. There isn't. So, I cheat. By just moving myself across the room. It takes a few tries to a safe location, and I really only got it by doing it from the side with the blue guy.

I'm really not sure how you get past this legitimately, but the other side has a set of bars. The only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is to get the two starfishs to fight, but I spent years on Galactic Empire with a similar problem and I don't feel that generous anymore. The doorway past here is already open, so I could have missed something in the north section. The orb. How do I deal with this? I don't know, I can't move it, and if I use any energy other than affirmative or creative, a creature pops out and kills me without any resistance. Affirmative just changes what creature kills me. Creative does nothing no matter what.

I go past it to the teleport. These things are around, acting as the limbs of some unseen enemy. Really creepy, also really easy to accidentally teleport back a level. If I stick around, white jellyfish crawl across the ceiling and then...

It's really not that terrifying in picture form.

...kill me. That's out. Talking is out. So I try bruteforcing it, and find a teleport. The next floor is exactly the same as this floor. In the sense that there are more of these things around. So I cheat...prematurely, it turns out, because you can just shoot these things. The eyes, not the jellyfish, they might be invulnerable. Well, this is a per session thing, so I'm not turning it off.

I go through a few floors of teleports, and I end up here. I get lost, but then I wonder if this is what the map was for. After all, it isn't like it was for anything last time. And it is, I eventually find my way. Time to go to this brain thing. This outta help me somehow. I'm glad I decided to cheat, because this is turning into too much for my ammo to normally keep up with, just waves upon waves of enemies. I must have accidentally skipped a massive chunk of stuff.

This leads to the brain, which is this thing. He gives a speech about energy, which basically just leads into him spawning too many enemies for anyone to fight. I really hope I accidentally skipped something important. I shoot him, and the things until he dies. I try talking to one of his...uh...followers afterwards, but it doesn't speak. I walk back through the maze and discover that nothing much has changed. I check the floppy image for unencrypted text, and discover that the brain should have said something to me before I killed it. I think I should have tried to kill it by cutting off its eyes first, but I didn't think of that in combat.

The enemy AI in this is very cruel. It's not unmanageable, but the eyes drift towards portals, which, you know, you need to go through, so you're basically running ahead of these guys in order to survive. Based on events that are about to happen, I guess that at some point you get a health/ammo upgrade that I just couldn't figure my way around. Because I know someone got past this section because there's a map for it, meaning he didn't get ground to a pulp. So, at this point I'm going to err on the safe side and try to cheat every time.

Not killing the brain seems to be tricky, I guess you just shoot him once before he finishes talking, since during the fight you will probably die based on the unearthly amount of spammed enemies the game throws at you. He tells me that to obtain total power, I need to become a being of entropy, joining with the fara eferon, the illusory world of appearances. He then sends me to a new room. I hope that I didn't need to destroy that orb. This also adds a question as to what would happen if I didn't deal with the portal to the Dark World down below.

Okay, a mirror and four pedestals. (I didn't take a picture, but there's a video later) The brain said something about creative energy, so I shoot the pedestals with creative energy. Nothing happens and I wonder if I did something wrong.

Until this guy pops out of the wall. He flashes through colors. I get the feeling he's probably not on my side. I think he's the Adversary, but I can't be certain, he might be Mordaine. He doesn't introduce himself, just informs me that he was cast out by Memory Store, and is now going to take over Mazeworld. I'm then marched into the mirror and die. There's no avoiding this, I've put myself into an unwinnable situation. The question is, where?

There are three options for this. Firstly, Mordaine's ghost was mentioned by the sphere after taking out the Dark King. The problem is, I can't see any place where this ghost wouldn't have already been discovered if I could. Secondly, I should have taken out the sphere that the blue guy wanted me to take out. This is the most obvious yet most perplexing case. Thirdly, there's another option I figured out by reading the ending text ahead of time. I'll explain it at the end. Because at this point, I don't know if I'm going to win or lose, but I am going to finish this.

My first plan is an odd one. Remember how I could switch being going to the maze section with the blue guy and the area where I have to avoid the dark ones? I found the maze later, so maybe the amoebas on the opening level are tied into the starfish in the maze. It's a nice idea, but it isn't right. They're not spawned by anything, they're always there. So, to get to the sphere, I need to find the ghost. I need to find something, anything.

So I explore the opening level again. The theory being that maybe the ghost appears after you are told about it. Because I already checked the maze for ghosts, albeit indirectly. There's nothing here, and double checking the maze again, there's nothing there either. That's unfortunate, because I suspect the condition for the starfish is the same as in other places, there's something there I need to find. No, it isn't in the area where the hooded figures were either. Went all the way down, nothing. I got one last idea, and this is either going to work or I'm out of luck.

Don't do anything with the Dark World, just go to the brain first. I actually get distracted on this by reader LanHawk, who was telling me about something connected to Valhalla, but then got unluckily roped into helping me with this game a bit. Alas, I think in retrospect all I did was waste his afternoon, but this distraction might have just helped me figure out another piece of the puzzle. After finally being able to move my character through walls again, I end up figuring out the trick to destroying the orb. Spam affirmative energy until the blue guy pops up.

He destroys the orb, then tells me about how things came to be this way here. The denizens of this level were tasked with turning away those who came in unknowing of the peril that lay below. Mordaine, believing himself to be capable of remaking the world as it was before. There was a great knowledge, from the Mazelords, which apparently was what undid Mordaine. With that, the two missing pieces are how to defeat the starfish and if Mordaine's ghost is around. Arguably, the two key points that have been holding me back from doing this legitimately. And after going through the maze again, no change. It looks like this might genuinely be the point preventing me from winning, which suggests that the two aren't linked like I think. Since I figured this out, maybe it works if I take out the Dark Lord?

Answer, I win. Another text pops up and I get the Dark Lord and the ghost of...Mordaine stare at each other. I can go into the ghost and then kill the Dark Lord. If I don't, we both die. George thanks me for my help and then the mirror turns into a normal portal. The game ends. With that, I am likely one of the few people to win Mazer II, even if it is a hollow victory. I will likely never know how to get past those starfish legitimately, nor am I ever likely to.

Finishing this, I'm still not entirely sure I understand the events as they happened. The glowing guy was Mordaine, as mentioned by the Dark Lord, and George called him the Adversary. Since it's also implied that he was stuck down in the area I was sent to, who helped the Dark Lord then? It just seems odd that Mordaine can affect the world so as a ghost trapped in a small part of the world. I know this isn't true, but when I realized I could walk into Mordaine, I thought that maybe that meant I was Mordaine all along, and this was the Adversary. It's in my head, possibly like most of this game's virtues, but it would have been an interesting twist.

This Session: 8 hours 30 minutes

Final Time: 15 hours 10 minutes