After the initial confusion and disbelief, Wen Feihang quickly calmed down.
Out of trust in Mu Xuxing - if it was really just an ordinary and weird little game, Mu Xuxing would not have specially taken it out for the two to try out. This game must not be too bad. In other words, the reason why the game producer set up such an inconclusive ending must have its meaning.
Thinking of this, he reorganized the information he had obtained from the game:
The heroine is named Viola, 13 years old, playing alone in the forest. According to the note from her father in the game prompts, the condition for achieving a non-failure ending is most likely that the heroine returns home safely and reunites with her father. When he continued to control the game character an hour after leaving the computer, he successfully typed out an ordinary, although inexplicable, ending.
And what caused this change was... the passage of game time
In other words, the conditions required to pass the game normally are essentially the same as the game character staying in one place and not moving for a certain period of time.
Wen Feihang seemed to be thinking about something.
It seems that the plot of this game is not that simple...
If Fang Lian values the gameplay, then Wen Feihang is most interested in the process of exploring the plot step by step. Keeping the unexpected discovery in mind, Wen Feihang opened the game.
He became interested in the game.
—
When Wen Feihang finally started the game, Fang Lian on the other side also reached the end of the game.
After solving a series of puzzles, the game character finally arrived at the witch's room. The whole game has come to the final and most difficult chase part. Here, the player needs to control the game character and escape from the house under the witch's rapid chase.
Since it was a boss battle, its difficulty was naturally much greater than the previous puzzles. Even though Fang Lian thought that his awareness and hand speed were pretty good, he still failed more than a dozen times in this place. After being stuck for nearly five minutes, he finally let "Viola" escape from the witch's house.
At the same moment Viola left the Witch's House, the game screen began to brighten and finally showed the same appearance as when it came out. When Fang Lian returned along the same path he came from, the missing upper half of the note from his father appeared in the grass where he picked up the note at the beginning of the game.
Fang Lian opened the note. The beginning of the letter was "To Viola", which seemed to be written by the heroine's father to her:
"I'm sorry for getting mad at you yesterday. I heard that there's a witch living in the forest who kidnaps lost children. People have been saying this for a long time. And your friend's home is near that forest, so I'm worried about you. Your friend's name is Irene, right? Let's go to her house."
The content of the letter stopped here. Fang Lian clicked on the lower half of the letter in the prop column. That was what he collected at the beginning of the game. The next content was: "It’s okay to play (at her house), but don’t go too far in the forest. If you have fun, come home early. - Dad."
It seems that this is roughly the plot of this game, Fang Lian thought.
The protagonist Viola regards Irene, the witch, as a friend, but for the witch, Viola is just a body she intends to replace. What the player has to do is to help Viola escape from the witch's house, return safely to her own home, and reunite with her father.
It's a very ordinary plot...
Thinking of this, Fang Lian couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. Although this horror puzzle game was still qualified in terms of gameplay, apart from the unexpected and carefully designed puzzles in the game, there was nothing that could leave a deep impression on people.
It’s good, but not enough.
In fact, it seemed to be just as he thought.
In the game, as Viola strode past the disappearing rose bushes, a drizzle began to fall in the forest. At the same time, a male character holding a gun appeared at the end of the road. Obviously, this was Viola's father who came to welcome his daughter home.
The father and daughter were reunited, and the game was warm and joyful. At this moment, the screen suddenly darkened, and only the upper body of the witch was left struggling to rush towards Viola, leaving a long bloody trail on the road. The father stepped forward without hesitation and protected his daughter behind him.
"Stand back, Viola!"
As the father said this, he fired a wooden shot at the witch in front of him. The screen flashed a brief flash of blood, and a small half of the witch's head was knocked off. More blood flowed out of her body, but the father seemed to think it was not enough, and quickly raised his hand to fire another wooden shot.
The rain is getting heavier.
The witch, who was hit by two wooden weapons in a row, fell dying in a pool of blood, unable to move anymore. She soon disappeared without a trace, as if she had never existed.
Viola returned safely to her father, and the two of them walked out of the forest together. At the end of the game, the blonde girl standing at the entrance of the forest turned her head and looked at the forest behind her, then she followed her father's steps and the two returned home together.
Seeing the word "end" appear on the game screen, Fang Lian finally breathed a sigh of relief. No matter what, at least he had reached the first ending. The next thing to do was to figure out how to reach the remaining endings.
As he thought about it, he happily opened the chat group and specifically circled Mu Suxing and Wen Feihang to express his joy at completing the game:
Fang Lian: I have played the first ending! The puzzles in this game are very interesting, and the horror atmosphere is also well created. It is amazing that a pixel RPG game can achieve this! I will write a detailed game review after I play the other endings!
Muxiuxing: Congratulations! There are 4 endings in total for "Witch's House". Come on^^ I'm waiting for your review.
Fang Lian: Don't worry, leave it to me. I'm an experienced player, unlike some rookie who is still stuck at the beginning. [Sunglasses]
Fang Lian mocked Wen Feihang out of habit, but he didn't expect that his friend, who used to argue with him, now had no intention of paying any attention to him. He made himself look bad and had to continue to study other endings unhappily.
Wen Feihang indeed did not see Fang Lian’s provocation—because he was completely absorbed in the game.
As a story-oriented player, his focus is exactly the opposite of Fang Lian's.
With the inexplicable ending at the beginning, and the fact that RPG games have always been one of their core selling points, Wen Feihang, from the moment he entered the game, was solving puzzles while analyzing the plot, wondering and thinking about every anomaly in the game.
The game prompted him to stuff the teddy bear into the basket, but he couldn't because the space was too small. When he followed the game's instructions and cut off the teddy bear's hands and feet, a pool of blood appeared on the screen where the teddy bear's hands and feet were cut off.
In this way, the teddy bear without hands and feet was successfully stuffed into the basket, but...
He looked at Viola, who showed no reaction on the game screen, and suddenly became a little restless.
Generally speaking, it is rare for producers of this type of game to deliberately emphasize the age of the protagonist. However, in this "Witch House", the words "13 years old" are clearly displayed under Viola's avatar. Although it is true that the actual operator of the game is the player, why did 13-year-old Viola not react at all when faced with the various horrific anomalies in the Witch House
She even casually cut off the teddy bear's arms and legs without showing any fear or panic.
Is it really just because Viola’s character in the game is such a calm one
Wen Feihang was a little confused.
In the following time, this confusion not only did not disappear, but seemed to become more and more bizarre as the game progressed.
Especially when, in order to pass through a room, Viola stuffed the little frog that had helped her a lot into the room with a big snake and deliberately let it be eaten, Wen Feihang felt even more weird.
At this point, the heroine Viola can no longer be described as "calm". This is not calmness or fearlessness, but rather cold-blooded and heartless.
Is this really just a character setting
Wen Feihang recalled the information he had collected in the previous room.
The witch girl was sick, no one wanted to play with her, and her parents didn't love her, so she chose to kill her parents.
It is obvious from here that the witch is a cruel and cold person, otherwise she would not have killed her parents. But on the other hand, judging from Viola's current performance, the protagonist controlled by the player does not seem to be much better than the witch.
As the game progressed, Wen Feihang became more and more confused.
In the witch's diary, the witch said that she and Viola were "friends" and that Viola could help her get rid of her illness. Regardless of whether the two were true friends or false friends, it is certain that Viola and the witch knew each other.
This wasn't Viola's first visit to the Witch House.
At the end of the game, when Viola came to the witch's room, the last witch's diary confirmed part of his guess: the witch and Viola were "friends" because the witch herself was ill and she wanted to get Viola's body.
It was already ten minutes later when Wen Feihang finally escaped from the witch's house. At the same time, Fang Lian on the other side, after thinking about it, also played a second game with the same ending as Wen Feihang's -
This time, when the witch, with only the upper half of her body left, followed Viola, Viola, who had said nothing in the previous normal ending, now stood there, watching the witch approach her leisurely. When the witch crawled in front of her and stopped, the girl who had been silent from the beginning of the game to now suddenly spoke:
"It's really a tangle."
Wen Feihang was not surprised by this. After all, he had seen the character of the heroine Viola during the course of the game. However, Fang Lian, who was playing the second round, was stunned and suddenly had a bad feeling.
As if to confirm his guess, the next second, Viola in the picture suddenly reached out and stabbed the witch with the knife in her hand: "How long are you going to chase me? Soon, this body of yours will die."
The witch just lay quietly on the ground, her eyes were already a bloody mess, but she said stubbornly: "...Give it back...to me..."
Give it back to me? What do you mean
Fang Lian didn't react for a moment, but the conversation in the game continued.
"'Give it back to you'? No way. This body doesn't hurt anywhere." Viola said, "This is the body you gave me, why do you want it back?" The blonde girl said this while calling out the witch's name in a relaxed tone: "—Viola."
etc!
This conversation means that Viola had already exchanged bodies with the witch at the beginning of the game, and the "Viola" controlled by the player is the real witch