The Madness [Psychological Horror / Puzzle]

[azuki_beans]

Oh gosh, I'm feeling really dumb right now, but I can't figure ANY of the puzzles out. Could you guys give me some hints? Anything, please. Am I supposed to go on clicking forever and eventually I'll solve a puzzle? HEEEELP!! D: (but please, can you try not to give me many spoilers? I still wanna try to figure something on my own XD)

[frederic09]

I would like to help, but since i've solved no puzzles, i'm stuck like you.

Well, i have theories, but i want to be sure before saying something wrong.

[Daggera]

I am with everyone here in the fact that I was only able to figure out one of the puzzles and that was in the non-hell area, perhaps the deeper part of his sub-consciousness? I must first say I loved "The Loop." I am not really into horror clowns and was not sure what to expect but I really love Robbie's character and the nightmare world he inflicted on his victims, it made me appreciate creepy clowns a whole lot more. I was able to solve most the problems until the last area where I had to rely on the hint-guide, but in this game I feel really stump. While playing "Madness" I would stare at the clues that I had written down on paper until I felt my brain melt and ooze from my skull out my ears, nose, mouth, and onto the keyboard. This must be what madness feels like, seeing the clues, not knowing how to fit them together but being obsessed in completing the task of solving the solution.


The puzzle I solved was the piano in the dark area after you rewind from end game.
Here is a hint:

The TV and the Piano are both pieces of the puzzle.

Still stumped? Here is a spoiler:

When you light a match on the piano it shows the available keys as: C D E F G A B (In that order) When you look at the TV words like Edge, Cage, Facade, Deaf, Dead, Face, Fade, flash on the screen, pay attention to the words you can spell and think of the piano as a keyboard to enter them in. You must get three correct in a row (Without leaving). If you key one in wrong no sweat, mistakes do not count. Every time you get one right an X shows up on the wooden frame but each time you get one right you are required to add in additional word the next time. First X: One word, Second X: two words, and the Last X: three so pay attention closely.

The other clues are small details that most of you have probably already figured out:

1._When you wash your hands (NO showers) the painting on the top floor changes to a waterfall, if you take a shower it changes to a lake.

2._ The globe gives suggestions on what to drink and depending what style of drink you make it sometimes changes the man painting in the kitchen and sometimes the tree (I am guessing the tree)

3._ The Telescope shows a pattern of a collection of stars. If you look at the book on the table in the dinning room (where the chess board and woman stature are) you can flip through the pages by clicking on the bottom right corner and it shows all the astrology signs with dates. Match the stars you saw to the ones in the book. This maybe common knowledge but since it took me a couple of attempts at the game before realizing that the room even existed or that you can turn the pages, really cool feature by the way, I thought to add it anyways.

4._ When you look at the computer in the game there are some dates on some of the texts files, that combined with the ones from the book and the dates on the random notes (The month can turn into a number) I tired these mix of numbers on the vault, some only seem to work on some days but when it accepted the code each and every time it unlocked a bomb and boom it is the next day. This may be a clue.

I really love the eerie atmosphere and the mannequins though they might have not chased after me still felt intimidating to be around in the same room, especially the one at the first house since as the days progressed the closer it would creep up to the bedroom and by the time it was in the kitchen I would panic knowing it was coming for me. These and the random jump scares from that same girl ggrr did not scare me, but what really got my heart pumping and even causing me to have to take a small break for a while was the piano, wonderful touch (Don't want to ruin the game with details but you know what part I mean). Please keep making great games, by the way is that In Orbit a hint at your next game?

The animations are just awesome, please tell me how you learn to do the ATL and to program the mini games?

[Greeny]

Free hint time! Generally when (if) a puzzle kills you, it means you input the wrong answer.
It also means the puzzle has reset, meaning the solution is now a different one. This is to prevent solving by brute-force.

I think there are four or five puzzles in the game that do this.

The animations are just awesome, please tell me how you learn to do the ATL and to program the mini games?

It may seem like a very impressive coding, but I can assure you that every time I worked on the programming I had the Ren'Py manual open. Sometimes a few Python manuals as well, but list operations is pretty much the most advanced Python you need to know for this. Which is not very. Oh, and random.randint().

Also: Labels. Tons of labels. And if statements.

Most of it is screen language - and a lot of logistics. Two sequences in the game are very similar in workings, except the first I worked really hard on a complex and tiring piece of code work, whereas by the second one I'd realised I could do the exact same thing a lot easier.

Please keep making great games, by the way is that In Orbit a hint at your next game?

Yup! Although it will be a pure VN, quite different than horror-puzzle.
Not that I'm done with horror-puzzle! I'm also working on a design for a more gameplay-centric game, but I might need to look into this "Kicksproinker" thing everyone keeps talking about. Games aren't cheap.

[frederic09]

part 4 is online ! Link : http://dai.ly/x16h1mt

but what really got my heart pumping and even causing me to have to take a small break for a while was the piano, wonderful touch (Don't want to ruin the game with details but you know what part I mean).

Yeah, I know what you mean. It was the same for me. And since i was recording, i had to choose what i should do.

I've decided to keep it a surprise, so the part 5 will stay hidden on my subconscious (i've deleted the file !).

And i will restart the game in easy mode. The alternate world is still giving me the creeps.

[azuki_beans]

Thank you everyone for your help I was able to figure out some (very) few things, so I'm not feeling that stupid anymore -.-

The puzzle I solved was the piano in the dark area after you rewind from end game.
Here is a hint:

The TV and the Piano are both pieces of the puzzle.

I was able to solve this one ~~finally *-* Thanks for your help

The other clues are small details that most of you have probably already figured out:

1._When you wash your hands (NO showers) the painting on the top floor changes to a waterfall, if you take a shower it changes to a lake.

2._ The globe gives suggestions on what to drink and depending what style of drink you make it sometimes changes the man painting in the kitchen and sometimes the tree (I am guessing the tree)

3._ The Telescope shows a pattern of a collection of stars. If you look at the book on the table in the dinning room (where the chess board and woman stature are) you can flip through the pages by clicking on the bottom right corner and it shows all the astrology signs with dates. Match the stars you saw to the ones in the book. This maybe common knowledge but since it took me a couple of attempts at the game before realizing that the room even existed or that you can turn the pages, really cool feature by the way, I thought to add it anyways.

4._ When you look at the computer in the game there are some dates on some of the texts files, that combined with the ones from the book and the dates on the random notes (The month can turn into a number) I tired these mix of numbers on the vault, some only seem to work on some days but when it accepted the code each and every time it unlocked a bomb and boom it is the next day. This may be a clue.

I had noticed some of these things, but not all of them.

like, I didn't know that the pages in the book in the dining room could be flipped. I guess I didn't click on it as much as I should've >.<. By the way, I'm really not that positive, but I think that the 'date codes' on the vault are somewhat related to the astrology signs. Like, I saw which astrology sign was on the starry sky and then compared it to the dates I had. Only one date seemed to be within the time period of the sign, so I entered it on the vault and it unlocked immediately. (It's just a guess, it could be that I got lucky and chose the right numbers for the wrong reason..who knows?

[frederic09]

yay ! i solved 2 puzzles tonight ! So now i know how to solve 3 puzzles !

Funny thing, i solved the painting puzzle while i was trying to solve the astronomy one x) It's all thanks to the bomb

I will release this record later as the part 5, and all the stuff i've done between the part 4 and the "part 5" will stay unreleased.

Now i will only work on this save, so no more inconsicenties, new game or whatever i've done.

Twinkle twinkle little star,
Why ? Why are you so afar,
I try to twinkle as you are,
But obviously you don't care.

edit : here's the link to the part 5 : http://dai.ly/x16jdb6

[Helianthus]

Didn’t report for a while because I finally had progressed, yeah !

So, the « hell » part is mandatory to continue the game as I’ve feared (but easier than I had thought) . I’ve gone through the maze and solved the third puzzle that was missing and all, now I’m in the new area. Which is a psychedelic asylum ? Who knows

The thing is I’ve encountered many problems there (I’ve only be there for a stroll, didn’t have time to solved any puzzle yet) :
*Firstly the GUI has disapeared : there is no way to save/load/access the setting or even quit the game. Is this really intentional ?
*Secondly, when I’m trying the paper valves puzzle with the poison bottles, I get a RenPy error each time I try to click on the valves.

But yeah, if anybody wants help for the 3 puzzle in the first area and some in the hell area (thanks Daggera for your hint on the piano one), I’m still willing to lend a hand

[Greeny]

*Secondly, when I’m trying the paper valves puzzle with the poison bottles, I get a RenPy error each time I try to click on the valves.

Can you get me a copy of that error? D:

[Greeny]

The thing is I’ve encountered many problems there (I’ve only be there for a stroll, didn’t have time to solved any puzzle yet) :
*Firstly the GUI has disapeared : there is no way to save/load/access the setting or even quit the game. Is this really intentional ?
*Secondly, when I’m trying the paper valves puzzle with the poison bottles, I get a RenPy error each time I try to click on the valves.

I've tested these areas, and the bugs you mentioned aren't occurring. Can you pm me with details of what happened?
I'd like to fix this, but it doesn't appear broken on my end...

[KimiYoriBaka]

*Secondly, when I’m trying the paper valves puzzle with the poison bottles, I get a RenPy error each time I try to click on the valves.

oh, and I had figured I got that only cause of cheated...

it's probably this one:

Code: Select all

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
  File "game/se.rpy", line 894, in script
  File "game/se.rpy", line 894, in python
NameError: name 'rec_list' is not defined

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
  File "C:\vns\complete\The Madness-1.1-all\The Madness-1.1-all\renpy\execution.py", line 288, in run
    node.execute()
  File "C:\vns\complete\The Madness-1.1-all\The Madness-1.1-all\renpy\ast.py", line 718, in execute
    renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)
  File "C:\vns\complete\The Madness-1.1-all\The Madness-1.1-all\renpy\python.py", line 1297, in py_exec_bytecode
    exec bytecode in globals, locals
  File "game/se.rpy", line 894, in <module>
    $ rec_list.append(1)
NameError: name 'rec_list' is not defined

Windows-7-6.1.7601-SP1
Ren'Py 6.15.7.374
The Madness 1.0

anyway, I've now played enough to see at least most of the puzzles in the first two areas. Having done so, I've concluded that this game is just too annoying to play. You've achieved a good atmosphere, and a lot of the design ideas are really clever, but the way the parts come together doesn't work.

some tips for the next time you make a horror game:
--make sure your interface is consistent both mechanically and visually. you've got a cursor change on all the immediately clickable objects in the first few rooms, which implies to the player that the cursor will change whenever they can click on something. as such, the ability to turn pages in the astrology book and the ability to play the piano are very easy to overlook.

--if you're going to kill your player, don't be so vague and abrupt about it. a black screen and a slicing sound is not enough if there was nothing leading up to the slicing sound and no sharp objects in the room.

--don't change the solutions to your puzzles without making a clear in-game indication that you've done so. there are players whose default strategy is to brute force, so it's important that you not let them think it's okay

--don't punish wrong answers unless you have a clear context for doing so and your puzzles are standalone. this one is a bit hard to explain, but you are actually encouraging your player to brute force as well as save scum.

--when making vague puzzles, try not to make them so vague that the player is left with nothing to even try to figure out. both the valves puzzle and the [power generator?] in the id section had nothing that I could find indicating what the goal or mechanics were. also, the paintings don't all look like what they represent (especially the time-of-day one).

--making a puzzle get longer with each iteration (referring to the piano) is a lousy way of making something more difficult.

--not sure if that section is mandatory since I only found this when testing the cheats, but regarding the "bossfight", it's generally not a good idea to put real-time elements in a point-and-click game unless it's a regular mechanic.

--delaying the effects of mandatory player actions during a puzzle is bad. as in really really bad. you should never separate important actions from their consequences like that. I have no idea how you can expect the player to figure out all of the triggers for the paintings puzzle.


You've definitely showed improvement in various areas since your last game, and most of the issues here are from interesting ideas that just don't go well together. even so, I think you're still falling short of a good game.

[pickle131]

I actually found the power generator puzzle to be one of the easier ones. I can't recall exactly what but I'm pretty sure there were a few things hinting at how it should be done. Either way, I'm going to try to make time to play this again tomorrow now that I have no midterms/essays for a few days *u* And tomorrow's the perfect time to play it.

[qirien]

Hmmm, I got to the second area by

trying the "rewind" button, too

. . . is that really how you get there? Or can you get there another way? It seemed like we had done a lot of things in the first area, but

I thought there would be one date entry for every astrological sign, but we only found 10 of them. And nothing I tried on the safe worked. And I found the Pisces on the telescope, but wasn't sure what to do with it - that was one of the few signs I didn't have a date for...

I'm stuck on the four valves/two buttons puzzle that's in the same room as the book - I can tell it has something to do with the

constellations in the creepy book, but I can't tell how to correlate the four constellations to the four levers? Every time we push both buttons we die...

. My husband insisted on playing on Solitary mode, so no matches for us... Loved the piano puzzle, BTW!

[Ran08]

I'm quite excited to play this. I think it's perfect for Halloween. Hahaha.

Though, I tried to open it, but my antivirus says that the .exe file contains something called "Dropper" thingy and suggested that I remove the file. Bummer. It launched an automatic scan, still, I believe this is safe, yes?

Looking forward to playing this. I'll probably just post again later once I finish.

[Greeny]

*Secondly, when I’m trying the paper valves puzzle with the poison bottles, I get a RenPy error each time I try to click on the valves.

oh, and I had figured I got that only cause of cheated...

You cheated? How?

Looking at the code, the only way for this error to occur is by somehow skipping an entire label; which would also account for the GUI not being accessible.

...you really shouldn't be cheating anyhow. Those are for testing purposes.

making a puzzle get longer with each iteration (referring to the piano) is a lousy way of making something more difficult.

Considering it's obviously a "simon says" puzzle, I'd have to say your argument here is invalid. Because that is exactly how it is done. It may not be immediately apparent though, because this puzzle adds an element of needing figure it out.

it's generally not a good idea to put real-time elements in a point-and-click game unless it's a regular mechanic.

I used to think so too, but the ones in The Loop proved to be some of the most popular sequences! And who am I to deny the fans their fix of adrenaline-fueled mental breakdown.

Though, I tried to open it, but my antivirus says that the .exe file contains something called "Dropper" thingy and suggested that I remove the file. Bummer. It launched an automatic scan, still, I believe this is safe, yes? :)

Yeah, some Antivirus programs are very strict. It's considered a virus just because it saves your save files to your hard drive... which is exactly what you want! It's completely safe. For your computer, anyways.


In the meantime, I am looking into that bug occuring on the fourth area, but without more information I'm a bit stumped. The code checks out, and, in testing there's no bug. I've looked for a way/error that could cause you to get to that area without passing by the correct labels, but no luck there either.