While some thought Krutovig's Abandoned was a wee bit too Submachine-sy, others adored the clean design and air of mystery, and now the series has a spin-off in the form of escape game Abandoned: The Cube Chambers, which sees you waking up confused and disoriented in a maze-like series of rooms filled with puzzles. To play, just click... your cursor will change when it passes over something you can interact with (but not ALL the things you can interact with), and you'll want to pay seriously close attention to your surroundings, because the game issssss... ambigious. Perhaps far too much so, given the vague nature of the puzzles that lack a lot of the direction of the original game. The Cube Chambers might be even more obviously Skutnik influenced than the first game, from the user interface to the premise, which is similar to Submachine 3: The LooP. The atmosphere is largely excellent, with a a sleek design and ominous audio, and if you don't mind a game that neither holds your hand nor even so much glances in your direction reassuringly, you might find it a welcome challenge, but others might find it a little too obtuse to conquer.
OK, I endured the first one of these, but this one is too much. The ripoff of Skutnik is reaching epic proportions, and the game just isn't any good. The first puzzle was tedious and obtuse, but the third is ridiculous.
The solution to the third puzzle appears to be a knight's tour. This is hard enough when you can see the board. The walkthrough for this section was incomprehensible, I'm not bothering.
I mostly agree. I enjoyed the first game, whether it was a ripoff or an homage, because the game itself was logical and fun. This...this makes no sense and tedious is the right word for it.
Heh
I have no clue how got out of the first space with all the rooms and eyes...
I just randomly moved from room to room and clicked on the eyes and finally the room to the right of the one you start in looked to the left so I followed it's lead.
For the third puzzle
This is a knights tour on a five by five board.
You can use Warnsdorf's rule: "move the knight so that we always proceed to the square from which the knight will have the fewest onward moves. "
First work out on paper how many places you can move the knight from each place. Then follow the rule. You can do it by following a sort of loop round and round the middle square which should be the last one you click.
For the forth
I think this is a sliding block puzzle.
Although I'm not sure on the order of the numbers.
123
456
78
It didn't seem that illogical to me; it just misses some midway confirmation, since most of the time you can just check if your solution is correct after a really long sequence of inputs.
The direct plagiarism of Skutnik's work is definitely annoying for me as well, though.
this is as close to plagiarism you can get without actually just slapping your name on someone else's work.
This escape game is weird.
The first room offered no clues for me. I just randomly clicked the eyes tul I thought moving one eye another moves too. Don´t know it tbh - I just solved it.
The 2nd room starts weird.
I checked very late that those signs are numbers and I already forgot which number is needed for the solution.
I restarted via continue and there seems to be a bug.
My "starting number where far higher than the goal I had to reach and every move just raised the numbers.
I gave up on this!
Even watching the walkthrough gave me many "whut?how?solution explained pls?" moments.
Aargh!
I know how to solve a slide puzzle, but I have no idea how to decipher the numerals! I didn't really take notes two levels back...
Okay, I'm out now.
The ending was... odd.
The "artwork" is clearly plagiarism. Puts me off entirely.
I really don't get why anyone would want to rip off someone else's art like this. I mean, it's not like we don't recognise where it comes from.
Can't solve the yellow brick puzzle with the tunnels after the sliding block puzzle - others weren't too bad.
Yes, it is derivative of Skutnik's great Submachine series, but pretty fun and very well done.
How does Mateus feel about it? If he's Ok and views it as homage, then I'm OK.
That chair at the end sure does look familiar :-\
For the sliding block puzzle, the numbers aren't too hard to figure out if you write them all down...
1 - Single line
2 - 2 lines
3 - 2 lines with a dot
4 - Single arch
5 - Single arch with a line
6 - Single arch with a dot
7 - Single arch with a line and a dot
8 - Double arch
So based on that, the grid upon starting is:
4 7 2
1 8 3
5 6
I agree on the yellow brick puzzle. I have zero clue as to what I'm supposed to be doing. Amazingly, the walkthrough just makes it more baffling.
Mateusz Skutnik is aware and doesn't seem to mind.
https://twitter.com/MateuszSkutnik/status/586261164562243585
I'm not entirely sure if this is right, but...
Just going around randomly and clicking on random eyes might be the solution. The clue seems to talk about hoe the brain gets tricked in to seeing or hearing things and identifying them as significant.
Ugh. I think the only thing worse than the puzzles was the ending dialogue. If you're sticking with the game in hopes that there is something akin to a Mateusz Skutnik ending that makes all the hair-pulling worthwhile, I sincerely urge to you reconsider.
If my comment only fortifies your curiosity (drat!), save yourself some time and just watch the ending on the walkthrough video.
Couldn't have said it better. My sentiments exactly.
Seconding Montante. This isn't a puzzle game; it's a math test, and not the interesting kind. The "puzzles" range from NP-complete exercises in tedium (solvable only by searching the state space) to arithmetic exercises in tedium. Insight and thoughtfulness are neither required nor particularly helpful.
@Goldude: it's not. Description follows in spoiler.
Each time you click an eye, all the eyes in the same row and column also change orientation. The goal is to get all the eyes looking straight at you.
Many people can accomplish this more easily by randomly clicking than by actually solving the puzzle. It's tedious, not interesting.
(I wrote Goldude's spoiler before the rest of the comment, and then forgot what I'd written partway through. Sorry about that: I stand by the complaint, but it only needs saying once.)
I thought the puzzles were fair. Only had to check the walkthrough in the dark room, because I couldn't see any clickable areas.
Also, the ending was predictable from the beginning, so no disappointment.
Also liked the reference very close to the end, because it's what happened to that character many times before, as explained by the architect.
For the third puzzle, if you want the pattern I worked out ...
Where 01 is the first move, 02 the second, etc. 1 is the starting point, the bottom right corner.
05 | 20 | 09 | 14 | 07
---+----+----+----+----
10 | 15 | 06 | 19 | 24
---+----+----+----+----
21 | 04 | 25 | 08 | 13
---+----+----+----+----
16 | 11 | 02 | 23 | 18
---+----+----+----+----
03 | 22 | 17 | 12 | 01
Sorry for the 01, 02, etc., but it didn't format right otherwise. (I hope it formatted right for everyone else -- it looks okay in my preview.)
Any clues on the pyramid puzzle? The walkthrough video tells me absolutely nothing.
Something I noticed on the pyramid's bottom row:
From left to right, the numbers indicated by the lines go up by powers of 2: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32...the last 2 should logically be 64 and 128.
Now to figure out how to get the figures for the next row up...
AH!!! I think I cracked the pyramid!
Each one in the 2nd row is the sum of the one directly below it and the two on either side! The 2nd from the left is marked as 28, which is the sum of the 8 directly below and the 4 and 16 on either side...4 + 8 + 16 = 28. The 4th from the left is marked as 112, which is the sum of 16, 32, and 64!
Yep, pyramid successfully cracked! The pattern I mentioned for the second row goes all the way to the top.
PYRAMID SPOILER:
From top to bottom:
686
98, 196, 392
14, 28, 56, 112, 224
2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64
The next area took me a bit to solve.
There's a clickable spot in the middle that will emit a tone and change the rate of the blinking light. You want the lights blinking as fast as possible.
The area after that was easy.
Just follow the map. You can walk through the walls on it, but don't.
After that, I was out!
Not bad...not very original, but not bad.
Yeah, I've never seen a game that's harder to start.
Is there ANY clue what you are supposed to do or where the eyes are supposed to face? Because frankly, this royally sucks in terms of playability.
I even watched the video walkthru and STILL can't replicate it's results.
Deeming this unplayable. AWFUL and a rip-off.
Thirding Montante. That's good advice.
The sliding block (not spoilered since it's already been mentioned) puzzle was particularly egregious to me...you can't even see the whole puzzle at the same time! I had to solve it on paper and then transfer that over to the game.
In response to a previous comment: I'm not sure if you were implying this, but to be fair, NP-Completeness doesn't necessarily imply "tedious". Many people enjoy NP-Complete puzzles (Bejeweled comes to mind).
I'm stuck on the one with all the floating books (are they books?). I have no clue what's going on. I see that
the buttons change the positions of the books when you look in the hole, but I have no idea how it works.
If someone could explain it to me like I'm an idiot, I'd really appreciate it.
nerdypants:
The floating books one took me a really long time to figure out.
There's no point to going through the rooms and looking for the books. The only important things are the wall with the four blocks in the center and the room that you look into (either one is okay).
When you start out, you see a block with a whole bunch of symbols on it. If you look carefully, there's a small single dot on the side of it.
Click the center room to go further in.
Move to the side until you see the yellow wall with four blocks in the center of it. (Clicking on the rooms to the left or right moves you side to side.)
If this is a fresh game, and you haven't clicked anything yet, then click in this order:
..x1 .____.x2 ..____..x3 (I put the blocks horizontally here and added underscore to show space)
If you already clicked the blocks on the wall a few times, then this is how to solve:
This may take a while because, depending on what was clicked, you may have to move back and forth between room and wall repeatedly.
Looking into the room, the goal is to have the tiles spread out in order according to the dots on the side of the tablets. Clicking on the blocks on the wall moves the respective book in the room one space to the right.
Just know that the final order of the books is:
., .., .____., ..____.. (again, underscore means space)
laid out side by side.
Afterward, look back into the room and you will find a door that opens to the next puzzle.
Have fun!
Well, certainly borrowed Skutnik's atmosphere, and I don't mind if he doesn't. For all I know, it's Skutnik creating under an alias - or not.
I'm not a huge gamer so this is the first time I've seen a slider puzzle set as entire rooms that you're standing in (not spoilered as per argyblarg above). Does that exist anywhere else? Then I remembered that I HATE slider puzzles. Whatever, I pushed my way through it. That as well as the knight puzzle were both interesting approaches that both needed to be solved (for me) on paper first.
Overall, I enjoyed it and would play another (like the potential sequel to this) when it comes around because I like the atmosphere. So thanks, Mateusz, for originating that even if it's others copying it! By the way, I remember watching your video on how long it takes to draw a single scene, and it didn't appear that borrowing something like that atmosphere would be an easy undertaking. So I'm sure a lot of effort went into making this artwork.
What didn't sit well with me was that every confounded stage was another geometric multi-room space that I had to map out on paper. Don't mind one or two, but the completion of each stage that should leave me with a feeling of accomplishment actually left me with, "oh brother, another one". (Actually, it now occurs to me that just duplicating rooms all over the place probably makes the artwork effort much easier, so not as impressed as I was a couple sentences ago.)
Anyway, thanks, Dora, for putting it up and for the well-written review that warned me of pretty everything I just said!
Now realize that they are clearly two different people (expected as much but didn't rule it out) because I went to Krutovig's web site and found that he used the knight puzzle previously. I also remember playing the Empty Room Escape before and enjoying that too.
Ah! The floating books actually display the Fibonacci sequence wherein you start with zero and add the last two numbers together to get the next number in the sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ad infinitum. That is a big clue to solving
the pyramid because you add all the previous numbers together to get the next set.
While the puzzles were kind of clever and they did flow together, I feel like it would behoove the creator to come up with a slightly different visual style so the games don't just look and feel like Skutnik Lite. That all said I did enjoy playing this. Another major ripoff though was Submachine 3 (if I recall correctly), the one with the endless, identical numbered rooms. Definitely this series lacks the mystery and story of Submachine but the puzzles are pretty solid.
I enjoyed the first game, and was so excited for this one!
But it ended up being way too obvious to me, and I didn't even needed to think just randomly clicked things and passed every puzzle. (but they weren't impossible or hard to understand)
The horse puzzle was boring and tedious, like you know the answer but you have to do aaaaall that long way for nothing. I would had love to be more interactive as having pieces or tools to grab and make things work, that would had been nice.
No challenging but the graphics were nice, shame they are stolen for another game is aesthetic.
Usage note: "obtuse" means "stupid". If you mean "hard to figure out", you want "obscure" or possibly "abstruse".
No need to be random--this is a logic puzzle.
These 9 rooms form a 3x3 grid.
Clicking on the eye in any one room will also swap the current position (down/up) of the eyes in every room in the same row (horizontal) and in the same column (vertical) as the one you clicked.
When they are all looking down, the eyes will all look toward the center square.
Welp the game broke. the arrows in the sliding block puzzle no longer work.
This is full of Masonic symbolism. The Eye of Horus everywhere, the pyramid, the double personality reference, the black and white chess... This game went overboard with the masonic influence. :(
Walkthrough for the 4th first levels with hits and solution/explanations :
First level : The eyes
You are in a 3x3 cube with eyes facing up or down, here is the starting patern :
_______________
| up |down| up |
|____|____|____|
|down| up | up |
|____|____|____|
| up | up |down|
|____|____|____|
Hint 1 :
Try to see what happens in the all cube when clicking on a eye
Hint 2 :
Try to make all the eyes look down
Solution :
It can be easily done with two clicks only : one bottom left, and one center right. Then go in the middle and click on the eye.
Second level : Strange signs
You start in a room and only see some writings on the wall
Hint 1 :
There is also some sings neer the exits
Hint 2 :
What is changing with the little signs when changing room ?
Hint 3 :
Isn't the strange writing acting like numbers ?
Hint 4 :
You have to find the room corresponding to the "number" at the starting room.
Solution :
Go 5 times right and 11 times up
Third level : The knight
You start in a room with a red button and a chess knight.
The all level is a 5x5 black and with square, all filled with red button that sometimes turn green when clicking on it.
Hint 1 :
In wich case the button turn green ?
Hint 2 :
A clue : the chess knight
Hint 3 :
A chess knight can only move in a 'L' patern
Hint 4 :
Try to fill all the level in green following a knight on a chess board
Solution :
Go to each room in that order, starting in the starting room :
|05|_|16|_|23|_|10|_|03|
|22|_|11|_|04|_|15|_|24|
|17|_|06|_|19|_|02|_|09|
|12|_|21|_|08|_|25|_|14|
|07|_|18|_|13|_|20|_|01|
Then go to the center of the level
fourth level : "floating" rooms
You start in a 3x3 square with 8 solid rooms with some writings on the walls and arrows on the floor and one empty space.
Hint 1 :
Try clicking on the arrows in particular rooms.
Hint 2 :
You can move a room is the direction of the arrow you clicking on move on a empty space
Hint 3 :
What could the writings on the walls mean ?
Hint 4 :
Writings are actually representing numbers
Explanation for the symbols :
Each symbol represent numbers from 1 to 8. The startings numbers are :
4-7-2
1-8-3
5-6
Incomplete solution :
You have to order the rooms to obtain :
1-2-3
4-5-6
7-8
Complete solution :
Do all the move in that order, number are the room you have to go in and the direction is the arrow you have to click on :
-6 right
-8 down
-7 down
-4 right
-1 up
-7 left
-4 down
-2 left
-3 up
-6 up
-8 right
-5 right
-7 down
-4 left
-5 up
-8 left
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