Finding good escape games update

EG24 remains as described in my previous post. Although the game makers posted have finally moved to either Unity or HTML5, the challenges have remained at a mediocre level. It appears that all the games are posted by the game-makers. There are no longer any Asian or (as far as I can tell) non-US games, almost all are cartoons. There are several "plug-in" puzzles (jigsaw, 4x4 sliders, push the lock onto the key) that replace more traditional escape puzzles.

In desparation, I pulled up the "Japanese games" category an started searching for home pages. Sure enough, games are still being created! I started off  looking for  Find the Escape-Men games from No1Game. Go to https: //www.no1game.net or 脱出ゲーム大百科 || 脱出ゲームの攻略と紹介 (no1game.net) 

It turns out that No. 1 Games is its own gamesite publishing other gamemakers, including tomoLaSiDo, Gotmail and Mateusz Skutnik! A MUST PLAY is Where is 2021? by Mateusz Skutnik (itch.io), a series he does every year. This one has a different interface.

My current favorite is Rinnogogo https://rinnogog.com/index.html or rinの午後 (rinnogogo.com). VERY, VERY challenging games -- I almost always end up hunting out a video walkthrough to find a missed hot-spot or way of interpreting the clues. The games auto-save, so you can safely pause play if you're more stubborn and less impatient than me.

Death of online escape games?

After several years of enjoying games in a lively online community,  one where people sometimes even chatted off-topic with each other about local weather and life-events, and helped each other solve the game puzzles, Escape Games 24 seems to be dying a long, lingering death of it's own. 

After a series of attacks about people "spoiling" the games by posting hints and answers, there are now very few posts. Instead of hints and walkthroughs (labors of love written by the community) that could be text-searched , we are left with video walkthroughs that are tedious to watch and sometimes don't even explain how the solution was arrived at. The site eventually came up with an upside down text hinting method, but it was too late.

The games themselves have deteriorated into cartoons, with mostly predictable puzzles. With the upcoming disappearance of Flash Games, many of the makers of excellent quality games have given up. Sometimes the games won't load at all. Some of the most inventive games were from Japanese game makers, and none of these ever get posted anymore.

Fortunately I saw an announcement in early 2019 about Tesshi-e discontinuing her/his website. I was able to go back and play (or replay) most of the games before they disappeared forever. (If you want to see what a truly beautiful game can look like, there are still you-tube videos). 

Amajeto even started making games with a different tool, and used to come out with a game roughly once a month, but their last game, Amajeto 2020, released after Christmas 2019 appears to have been a swan song. 😢

As for the old community, about the only time I see them post is when small-tool releases one of his riddle games. Unfortunately, I'm really terrible at these puzzles, rarely getting to even level 10 of 50+. 

Escape Games update

I find I don't play as regularly as I used to. It's interesting to see after a few months of inactivity what has changed -- the game makers and the participants.

Myself -- after playing a few games live, I decided I prefer to NOT do so. Everyone is rushing so quickly and even if you feel you're doing well, you can quickly start to feel stupid. (Even worse, nowadays, sometimes no one else posts and you wonder if you're all alone or if the game is so simple that no one feels it's worth posting anything.)

The game makers: some of the great puzzlers I used to play with seem to have disappeared,
* Sakura -- (it turns out this was the name of the web server, not the game maker) -- no recent posts
* Minoto -- few updates, and the later ones were a series of simple, short games; also missed the
bad translations that we sometimes had fun with, and the nicknames some of the characters had ("Uncle Comb-over") and most of all the wonderful song-throughs from zoz!
* Gamershood (formerly Rotuc) -- disappeared completely

However, we still get occasional treats from
* Tesshi-e -- still one of the best game-makers ever, publishes less often
* Tomatea -- Not on my earlier list, but another "one of the best"

Overall, I still prefer to try Japanese game makers. Overall, the quality of puzzles and implementation is much higher than the norm. There's the occasional insurmountable language barrier. But where else would you find a game where the furniture in the room  is made from the name of the furniture rather than a drawing?

Newer puzzle series:
The "Open Attempt" series at first seemed strange, then quite challenging, and now seems to be in the doldrums.
Angelika's "Butterfly Escape" series (why did the first one never make it to EG24?), where you don't escape but help the colorful butterflies get out.

Then there are the escape games I occasionally run into that cannot be posted on EG24 because they're too platform-specific. But which I could never enjoy without the  experience gained there.

*The Madogiwa game series published as Windows 8 apps: Every bit as beautiful and perfect as Tomatea and Tesshi-e. For help, I had to find a Japanese site and use Google translate to get barely understandable English. Latest is number 18, and we can only hope the series continues.

* The Emptiness - a somewhat creepy game published by Big Fish games with a whole series of escapes -- each door in the (haunted?) house is a new set of puzzles! Multiple endings depending on choices you make at the end.

Well, I've rambled long enough and left out things I meant to say but it's getting late ...

My history in computer gaming

The first game I remember getting addicted to was Tetris. It was a new game at the time, and I played it enough I was in danger of Carpel Tunnel.

The first serious game I played was Myst. It was new and there was a lot of buzz, so I bought it. I would go to bed with the puzzles whirling in my brain. It took at least a week (evenings after work), but I made it all the way through on my own! I don't even know if there were any online bulletin boards at the time -- the Web was either brand new or not yet out -- so I had no one to go to for help.

After some experimentation, I decided that my favorite "genre" was adventure games. I no longer have (if I ever did) the kind of quick reflexes needed to play many of the more popular games (let alone the stomach for all the violence). My all-time favorites:

• The Longest Journey -- Like an interactive novel.
• Syberia and Syberia II -- Introduced me to the beautiful artwork and the creative genius of Benoît Sokal (I just looked him up in Wikipedia to get the circumflex on the "i", and discovered he's from Belgium! I had thought he was from Quebec for some reason.)
• Culpa Innata -- A trip into a future world of intrigue where even the dressy shoes are sensible flats!
• Bad Mojo -- Still one of the most creative games -- you play as a cockroach, and have to solve puzzles and avoid hazards as a cockroach would.
• Mysterious Island -- Not quite in the same league as the others here, but still a very good game. I loved the brown/white sketches that served to tell the story line, as when you finally succeed in making a meal! (When I think back on it, this is an Escape game.) 

Best sites I've found for learning more about adventure games are JustAdventure.com for reviews and uhs-hints.com when you want hints, not hand-holding.

How I found EG24 and Escape Games:
I've had trouble finding good PC games for awhile.  Partly, cause I'm not going to Fry's very often, partly because fewer are made. I eventually found Brainbashers, which has new puzzles out every day. That site led me to NotDoppler.com, which is where I ran into my first room escape game. It was a hotel room with a locked door and there was no way out and nothing lying around. I finally looked for a walkthrough on EG24, and my first reaction was not favorable -- why would I look under the bed or inside the lamp? But, THEN I stumbled on a Submachine game. (One of the later ones, maybe 5 or 6.) The puzzles were so well done, I had to go back and do as much of the series as I could find. And I was hooked!


As with others, I lurked for a while. It takes some practice to learn common conventions (like, check under and behind all furniture and the like. Eventually there was a live game when everyone was saying "Where is ...?" and I wanted to jump in and tell them, but couldn't! So, I had to come up with a  moniker and open a blogger account. I decided to go for the "power of  Z", (like zoz and Zazie and Zoe et al.). Of course, once I started posting, I was afraid I'd cursed myself, as it seemed I was always begging for help ("What stick? Where?" or "What other view?"). I console myself that we've all been there, and if I'm there more than most. So, the question mark will remain an important part of my icon.

Advice to others new to the genre, do several by the same maker. (Minoto and Sakura were the ones I started with. Selfdefiant is has a good rigorous approach.) This way, you're concentrating on solving the puzzles instead on what are the conventions this writer is using. (For instance, in a selfdefiant game, the cursor changes when you get to a "hotspot". Others, you have to click on everything you can think of trying to find views and items.)

Escapists Haiku
( written in October, 2010 after reading comments in a game where small-tool was trying to explain haiku.)

Trapped in a locked room --

look, find, use tools, solve puzzles

and door will open!

Escape Game creators to Watch

Since I've just been on vacation for a month, I need a list of regular escape game creators to look for and catch up on:
* Sakura -- once a week
* Minoto -- once a week
* Selfdefiant -- creates several different series, all excellent! Super Sneaky Spy Guy, asylum escapes, gray room escape, blue room escape, etc.
* Gamershood (formerly Rotuc)
* Tesshi-e (thanks to kitkatfox)
* Ainars -- clever puzzles, irregular
* Miller

Game suggestions from small-tool:
- Jan's Room - Burger Shop Escape
- Dr.Stanley's House 2
- Ashas Adventures Part 10: The Little Girl and Kite

Game suggestion from hbear:
- Shadow escape

South American locks and keys

Just got back from 2 months in South America.
As an escapist, I was struck with some of the unusual keys and locks I encountered
Unfortunately, in every case I forgot to take pictures before we checked out.

In Argentina, several of the locks worked as follows:
- the keyhole was horizontal rather than vertical
- the key would would only work one side up
- in one hotel, the key/lock was a broad "^" shape (upside down V)

In Brazil, we encountered the following
- the keyhole on one side was horizontal (-)
- the keyhole on the other side was vertical (|)
- the key was an "X" shape that would only fit in one side up; each of the 4 blades had different notches
-when you inserted the key in the lock, the 2 panels that formed the slits moved aside

Also in Brazil,  an electronic key and lock
- the key hole was a slot in the top of the doorknob
- the key was a card shaped like a square with  a rounded end (slightly larger than a regular key, smaller than a key card
- the key fit rounded side down into the handle -- you had to hold it in while twisting the handle to open the door