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And I just cleared the first dungeon, but when I went back to the motel to save, I find that there's an invisible wall blocking the exit, and I can't get out. Luckily I had a different save I could load to salvage my game, but this seems to be a persistent bug. Closing and reopening the game, then playing through the second save to clear the first dungeon still lands me in a motel room with the exit blocked.

...And playing through the second file a third time reveals that I should sleep, except you only get the clue if you try to go into a dungeon other than the one you just cleared. Which is about the last thing I'd do if I just cleared a dungeon and wanted to save after the cutscene.

I guess the game expects us to stumble around talking to bacground props that were unresponsive the first time we explored the area.

I'm especially salty because I crafted a crapton of items before I realized I was trapped the first time, and now I have to do it all over because the game will only tell you you're supposed to be trapped if you don't get trapped in the first place.

Commentaries249 days ago

Oh, and Soda's description says it has a 30% chance of permanently increasing your stamina by 1 point, which makes you assume it means your Maximum Stamina, but what actually happens when you hear the chime that signals the extra effect triggering, is you recover 1 point of stamina. Or nothing if your stamina's already full.

Commentaries248 days ago (1 edit)

But it turns out I'm STILL trapped after all, because this time, the game won't let you return to your motel room after you leave it, which locks you into going into the next dungeon since like the previous place, you can't even leave the area it's in without clearing it.

So apparently if you ended up needing to make more money so you can buy the carnival goodies, you'd better reload to the very beginning and do ALL THE FARMING YOU NEED FOR THE ENTIRE GAME when you have free roam before the game even starts.

~~I don't think I like this game design? Yeah, I hate it.~~

Edit: There's a save point in front of the haunted house, and thankfully you can go back to the carnival as long as you don't enter the dungeon. It's also possible to win the wizard's casino game. I won't speak of the odds, but so long as you have the cash to buy at least two(?) skull tokens, it's theoretically possible to savescum to grind up enough via casino to buy the carnival goodies. I won't speak of the odds though, and I'd much prefer straightforward money grinding and just buying the damn tokens.

Commentaries247 days ago

So this one's probably just my potato being a potato, but the part in the Haunted House where the boss chases you around IS SO LAGGY. Ugh, and the game crashed when I went through the stairs after I lit the furnace.

This one's probably coded in though, when I reloaded and lit the furnace again, the room with the save point blew up when I went in and dropped me in a black screen. With the game-over-on-touch boss in it, naturally.

It's getting so the most terrifying thing about this game is anticipating the next crash and thinking about how it's mechanically going to screw you over next.

Commentaries247 days ago

Speak of the devil. I stepped away to get something to eat, and came back to find the screen on my laptop a mess of rainbow horizontal lines that DON'T get fixed with a restart. Guess what game was playing.

Is this thing malware?

Commentaries243 days ago (1 edit)

Finished one "ending" on my other laptop while the potato is heading off for repairs. Yes, having it fixed is still more practical for me than buying a new one.

First off, the difficulty in the school is BRUTAL. It forces you to fight multiple Gatekeeper bosses solo, which doesn't look doable unless you had the Purge skill beforehand, because you know Rage? The skill that lets you do double damage? They have two buddies that come out in the middle of the fight that buff them with it. And not even Ninja Star + Evasion + Tank will save you, they can hit you through 35% accessory evade + a 65% evade buff AND kill you through 80% damage reduction. And you will probably spend the whole battle struggling to keep those buffs up.

You can get Purge from the cutscene between the end of the Haunted House and the start of the school, but if you don't have any backup saves, gg.

Oh, and if you needed to make money for whatever between the dungeons, remember that paragraph I struck out in a previous post? Turns out the only moment you have with free roam is the one chance you get before the first dungeon, and boy, do you need it.

If somehow you manage to make it through the Gatekeepers, the boss will start to chase you. If you loved the insta-gameover bullcrap in the haunted house, you're in for a treat, because this is more of the same and the boss can even corner you while you're saving, so that when you load, it's SITTING RIGHT BESIDE YOU raring to send you to the game over screen again. And again. And again. You can actually escape that if it happens, but it was so traumatizing I can't remember how I pulled it off.

If you manage to get past that, Ronin and Arnie are waiting to join your party outside. Arnie shows up even if you refused his help in the haunted house. And just like in the haunted house, he comes with no equipment other than a shotgun. Which is actually better than that mooch Ronin, who previously joined you naked and refuses to wear a costume to cover up.

I'm not sure how you get the bonus from the haunted house, and I'm pretty sure I don't care to go through that BS a third time just so I can find out, but simply telling Arnie to sit tight isn't it. And having Arnie in your party at that point (iirc) gives you a dialogue choice to not blow it sky high, not that I took it.

Oh, and the cutscene after your escape throws out an error that freezes the game if you happen to have resized the window. And guess who thought the window was too big for my taste. I swear this game has the cheapest game overs.

Going back to the school, once you pick up your flunkies you can go back into the room the boss is camping and lead it through a merry chase through a DARK area as you do the puzzle that lets you pull its heart out of what looks to be a fusebox. Which is in a tiny room that it can follow you into. And as a bonus, it even has a savepoint you can use to corner yourself into getting camped again. Fortunately, your flunkies are immune to deathtouch and you can use them as shields to somewhat block off the boss. Though I'm pretty sure I just got lucky and ended up in a configuration that let me slip though despite having saved the game with the boss already bearing down on the 1-person-wide corridor that was the only exit out of the room.

And I thought the haunted house was BS. Turns out it was the game's idea of being nice.

After you take the heart and run, you get a scene outside. And you can FINALLY fight the boss without it instakilling you with a single nudge. Except it won't stay dead. Each time you kill it, it waits for a short while and then attacks you again. If you have the resources, you can farm it for the lulz. But that really is the final boss, because once you complete the next objective, it's a non-combat zone until the credits. You get a cliffhanger, you never find the COVID UMA or discover why the game's title references the lungs. After the credits you can make a clear save you can't load.

I'm going to leave behind links to a couple of saves. File1 is at the beginning of the game before the first dungeon with some farming done, and file8 is just before entering the haunted house with the carnival stuff bought. Should make this game a bit more tolerable to those that are already sick of its jackassery.

Before you insert these files into the save folder, you need to save in slot 1 and slot 8, otherwise the game won't detect them. Then delete the throwaway saves you just made and insert the saves from the links below.

file1 - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cerkw4k0k8ca8pznjtq6k/file1.rpgsave?rlkey=rrlc4b3...

file8 - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0zpl7cfpros1bd01b6gdi/file8.rpgsave?rlkey=eb0jm7w...

Edit: The icons for the throwaway saves are still going to display on the save menu until you load and save over them.

Commentaries242 days ago (3 edits)

Backtracking to see if I can get other paths.

If you tell Arnie not to come over at the haunted house, then proceed to delete the footage and surrender, unless you snark at the cop, the game will lock up after you use the brush on your handcuffs.

There's something wrong with the handcuff timer, too. I reckon it's supposed to run so the game will do something if you forgot to pick up the item you're supposed to pick it with, but it looks like it will only run if you snark, and nothing happens if it runs out. Ergo, if you don't have the brush, you're going to have to reload.

If you're wearing any of the three costumes you can buy at the carnival, the cop will still say you had no costume. Actually, if you were wearing the default disguise, he says you had no costume, too.

If you stay silent or confess, after the cop leaves the room, the dialogue for snarking plays, and you get the prompt for getting the handcuffs off, but as previously stated, the timer won't start and the game locks up.

Same thing if Arnie's with you, except the game can tell if you're wearing a costume now. You can talk to Arnie in the cell, but one of the options was locked for me because I wasn't in negative standing with Arnie. Not sure how to get on his bad side.

I can't see any more options that might unlock a different path, so I guess I'm done.

I can't believe this guy used to charge for this. Well, it's free now, so I guess it saves me the trouble of getting a refund.

itch.io

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