Fang Lian had just finished downloading the game when a new message popped up on the chat software in the lower right corner of his computer.
Wen Feihang: What game review? Add me!
Fang Lian: Forget it, Wen Feihang. You want to review a horror puzzle game? You haven't read many mystery novels, have you? I guess the beginning is enough to keep you stuck for half an hour.
Wen Feihang: Everyone can brag. If you have the guts, let’s see who can clear the level first. The loser will treat me to lunch for a month. Do you want to come
Fang Lian: Of course, this kind of plot-oriented pixel RPG game should have more than one ending, right? Then the standard for clearing the game is to collect all the puzzles? Muxuxing Ah Mu, you can be the referee.
After three seconds of silence, Muxuxing on the other side quickly responded: Okay, keep going ^o^~
Very well-behaved and cute.
Under normal circumstances, with their understanding of Mu Suxing, they should have realized something was wrong when they saw his rare facial expression at the end. However, at this moment, they already felt guilty, and they had argued with each other in front of Mu Suxing because of the game review, and they had given up their boast of being the first to clear the game. Therefore, Fang Lian and Wen Feihang did not take their friend's unusual tone as a problem, and went to play games happily.
Fang Lian opened the game.
The painting style of "Witch's House" is quite simple, of course, almost all pixel RPG games are like this. As a hardcore game enthusiast, Fang Lian has a wide range of games, including the most common pixel RPG games in stand-alone independent games.
With Muxiuxing's reminder, Fang Lian was very satisfied with the graphics of "Witch House". In fact, due to his good acceptance of this type of game, Fang Lian believed that compared with similar games, "Witch House" could be described as "exquisite" in many details.
"The graphics look pretty good, but I don't know how the puzzle elements are set up. I hope it can give me a surprise..." Fang Lian thought as he immersed himself in the game.
Unlike other games on the market with outstanding art and special effects, "Witch's House" can be said to have abandoned all cumbersome and useless elements. The opening of the game is just the opening, there are very few buttons that players can click, and the plot is extremely simple: the protagonist controlled by the player is a blonde girl named Viola. Since the way home is blocked by a rose bush, the only way left is to go to the Witch's House.
Fang Lian was worthy of his status as a hardcore gamer. After a brief trial, he quickly figured out how to play the game and came to the witch's courtyard.
"The save point is the black cat... Does that mean I can't save immediately?"
After saving the game at the Black Cat's place with ease, Fang Lian then controlled the heroine Viola to enter the "Witch's House" as the title indicated without hesitation.
The interior of the entire witch's house is basically dark, and only a certain range centered on the protagonist remains bright. The house is full of death traps. For example, after entering the door and walking through the corridor, if the player does not pay attention to the bloodstains in the center of the room and rushes forward on the bloodstains, the walls of the room will instantly close and strangle the player to death on the spot.
"From what I can see now, the main plot of the game should be that the player helps the protagonist escape from the witch's house, right? The plot seems to be quite ordinary." Fang Lian commented in his mind while playing: "The puzzle elements and horror atmosphere are both well-created."
I originally thought that pixel games should hardly bring much horror to players, but the "Witch's House" in front of me has broken this perception. The gloomy picture and weird BGM give people a great sense of immersion. In addition, there are many and sudden death points in the game, so Fang Lian always felt nervous when trying it out.
It doesn't have the visual thrills and terror that are common in horror games, but it still makes people involuntarily immersed in it, terrified, as if something scary will jump out of the game at any time.
Fang Lian followed the instructions of the game, cut off the limbs of the teddy bear, and then roughly stuffed the limbless teddy bear into the basket. As soon as he walked out of the room, the game was over again because of the big teddy bear running at the end of the corridor. Fang Lian couldn't help it:
"There are too many deaths in this game!"
With his proficiency in various games, he would not have died so many times in "Witch House", but as a puzzle game, if he wanted to pass it, he had to investigate every item in the Witch House and not miss any clues. Unfortunately, every clue in the game could trigger a death ending.
"Isn't this game producer really trying to torture the players on purpose?" Fang Lian complained.
Despite all the complaints, Fang Lian still continued his gaming journey. He even gradually got used to being abused and started to actively seek abuse.
Poisonous soup? Okay, I drank it.
A book that will kill you if you read it? Let me see.
With the fearless mentality of "Isn't it just courting death? I have the save file anyway", Fang Lian began to move step by step from the first floor of the Witch's House to the fifth floor.
It has to be said that the puzzles in this game are quite interesting, but also full of cruelty. For example, on one floor, the player will get a frog with a cute "" that jumps around Viola. In the subsequent puzzle-solving process, this frog once represented the only warmth in the witch's house. However, it was this only warmth that Viola, controlled by Fang Lian, was thrown into a room with snakes due to the need to solve the puzzle.
So the cute little frog died.
This is not the end yet.
Perhaps because they feel that this is not enough to torture the players' conscience, in the subsequent puzzle-solving process, after entering the room with the snake, the player will find that the original snake has disappeared, and the room is a bloody mess, which seems to indicate the death of the frog.
When the player enters another room and sees a group of tadpoles in a pool, the tadpoles will angrily accuse Viola. It is after this that something even more outrageous happens - in order to eliminate the curse of the bloody glass slippers, Viola cleans the glass slippers in the pool where the tadpoles are - so the clear pool turns from blue to red, and the tadpoles float to the surface because they are all dead.
Fang Lian couldn't help but open the game menu and took another look at the "13 years old" next to the character's avatar, as well as the cute but expressionless face of the little girl in the picture.
“…Are lolita protagonists of this style popular in horror games nowadays?”
Considering that he had a competitor, Fang Lian didn't think much about it at the moment. He just sighed at the little Lolita protagonist who showed cruelty that was inconsistent with her age, and soon threw himself into the puzzle-solving part of the game again. He had already reached the fifth floor of the Witch's House.
Compared with Fang Lian's smooth gaming process, Wen Feihang's gaming experience was quite bumpy.
In fact, his gaming experience couldn't even be described as "unsmooth". Although both of them opened the game at the same time, Wen Feihang encountered force majeure when he just entered the forest scene on the game screen.
He was dragged by his mother to help in the kitchen.
The whole process happened so fast that Wen Feihang didn't even have time to ask Fang Lian to pause the game before he was dragged to the kitchen by the woman at the top of the family food chain. Considering that he had just entered the game and had no game progress that needed to be saved, Wen Feihang did not deliberately pause the game. He left the game screen showing the blonde girl standing alone next to the black cat and hurriedly got up to go to the kitchen.
The study was empty.
On the computer screen, a blonde girl in a white dress stood quietly beside a black cat. The wind blew through the forest, leaving wave-like shadows on the screen. Everything looked natural and normal.
There is no one in the study.
Because of this, Wen Feihang didn't know that ten minutes after he left, the black cat standing on the tree stump in the picture suddenly squatted down. Fifty minutes later, the black cat disappeared for no reason. Only the blonde girl, who was not controlled by anyone, was still standing by the tree stump, motionless.
It seems like something has changed, yet it seems like nothing has changed.
After helping in the kitchen for an hour, Wen Feihang finally returned to the computer.
Wen Feihang was still very concerned about this so-called bet. Because of this, when he just returned to the computer, without even looking at the game first, he immediately opened the chat software and tried to bargain with Fang Lian about the time it took to complete the game:
Wen Feihang: Fang Lian, I just opened the game and was dragged away by my mom to prepare the ingredients. Now I’m still stuck at the initial scene of the game. Can you give me one more hour
Fang Lian was of course unconvinced: "Where's the evidence? Who knows if you were really taken away by your aunt, or if you forgot to save the game, or overwrote the game, and had to start over? I think you should first consider what to treat me to next month."
After saying this, Fang Lian stopped replying and continued playing his game.
Wen Feihang wanted to cry but had no tears, but he was helpless. While considering whether he should be brave enough to ask his mother to be a witness, he casually controlled the game character on the screen.
A thirteen-year-old girl named Viola, whose father left a note asking her to be careful when playing in the forest... Speaking of which, he didn't know if it was his illusion, but he always felt that this scene seemed a little different from the scene when he first entered the game
It felt like something was odd, but if he was asked to pinpoint what was different, he seemed unable to explain.
He was a little puzzled, but his hands did not stop moving. The road above was blocked by grass, so the only road that players could pass was the one below. This should be the road leading to the main scene of the game, the Witch's House, right
Wen Feihang thought as he asked Viola to go downstairs.
Soon, a huge rose bush appeared in front of Viola. When she was thinking about how to pass through the rose bush, a white light suddenly flashed across the screen, and the bushes blocking the road disappeared without a trace in an instant. The sound of wind in the sound effect also disappeared, and was replaced by the sound of dripping rain, which corresponded to the sudden rain in the forest.
It's raining
Wen Feihang didn't think much about it and directly controlled Viola to continue moving forward.
Just when he was worrying about how to catch up with Fang Lian's one-hour lead over him, as Viola walked out of the forest, the game screen suddenly went black, and the word "end" popped up in the lower left corner, symbolizing the end of the game. The next second, the entire game automatically jumped to the menu page.
Wen Feihang was completely confused.
Is that it
The problem is that he didn't do anything at all. What kind of weird game is this? Can one clear the game by just idling