The Dark Room 3
After more than five years, it's time to fall back into Johnathan May's The Dark Room all over again with a new set of rooms to explore and puzzles to unlock. In fact, just figuring out what you're supposed to do is a puzzle all its own in each room you encounter. While not as big as the Dark Complex, this third installment is every bit as engrossing and tricky as the original, and an absolute blast to get lost in.
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I never expected a third game, I can't wait to play this one.
I never did manage to beat the Dark Complex though. Those darn slider puzzles!
Wow, another one. Can't wait. These were some of my favorites to play.
The Dark Complex.
The.... ******* Dark ... Complex...
I have yet to solve that game. And he made a new one... What have I done to deserve this?
*clicks on the play game button, grumbles the whole time with curses and profanities*
I don't know how to solve the yellow room...
Has anyone solved any of the puzzles yet? I'm ashamed that I can't solve ANYTHING
Solved one! Blue:
It's a hand opening. There are six images.
The images belong in a certain order.
But in each panel, the images aren't in the correct order.
In each panel, one image is out of order. Set each panel to the image that is ordered incorrectly.
I've done the red room! To solve it, you need to (light hint):
not let the eyeball see you.
In other words, (explicit hint):
when you click on a panel, an eyeball appears on the panel OPPOSITE it. So if you clicked on the bottom side, the eyeball would appear on the top. Then, you need to click on the panel OPPOSITE of the one the eyeball is facing. If it is looking right, click the panel to the left of the one with the eyeball. Find where it moves to, and keep doing this about six times. If it is facing directly toward you, click on the panel it's on (the panel "behind" it).
Whew, that was even more exhausting trying to explain it than it was solving it! I haven't figured out any other rooms yet, particularly the purple one...
Hm, not doing terribly badly thus far.
I've solved
Green
This one was the easiest so far, I think. There are three layers. (Much more might be too strong a hint this early on.)
Yellow
Mr. Button has two things to show you here.
Cyan
This one's just a maze. Make a map.
The dark room series got me into escape games. Seeing this pretty much made my day.
Magenta:
You don't need to click the mouse. Just move it.
Swipe the images to change them. You can swipe four directions: up, down, left, right, to summon different images.
Most images are unique, but there are a few that appear on multiple panels.
There are 3 images that appear on two panels. These look like (vaguely) a boy's head, a Tetris piece, and a reptilian helmet. Display these images, and you're done.
I like tough logic puzzles - I'm one of the biggest Myst-series fan -, I like it when even what the puzzle is about isn't clear and told you, but you have to find it out before you can even start thinking about solving them - still I could never get to like the Dark room games. I guess the one thing that makes it impossible for me is this claustrophobic close up view - no chance to "step back" and watch the big picture, always from closeup, like I was near sighted and had to watch everything from 2 inches... Like I had to solve the Rubik's cube held right in front of my eyes... For me that's annoying beyond description and makes me quit after like 5 minutes...
Shame because I guess the puzzles are good :(
bio
I've got three puzzles down so far. The green room (curves and straight lines), the blue room (hand gestures) and the light blue room (the maze). Here are basic hints, not detailed instructions (except for the Blue Room, that one gets relatively explicit).
Green room:
There are three distinct "levels" for the lines - near, middle and distant, also indicated by the opacity of the line - near is almost solid, middle is faint, distant is almost invisible
You need to connect the lines and curves...
...but not just in any way...
...make three distinct loops around the room - one near, one middle and one far. I made a diagram of this one and used three different colors to connect the lines and keep them straight. Remember - each color has to make a loop (connect back to itself) without crossing itself.
Blue Room:
You can click through the hands on each wall.
As you click, pay attention - what is the hand doing?
The hands are "exploding" - goes from a fist to an open palm.
But watch carefully as you click through each wall - something's wrong.
One hand is out of order!
Put the out of order hand on each wall (and floor and ceiling) and you're done!
Light Blue Room:
This looks like a maze.
Oh hell, it's three dimensional. I can go up and down.
Well that sucks.
Goal is up on the 4th level (if you count your starting level as level 1).
I made a map, it was complicated, but it got me there. I'll post explicit directions in another post, maybe when I'm done with the other rooms :)
Oh wow, Dark Room 3?! That came out of left field. I didn't think there would ever be another installment in this great series after so long. This was the most pleasant surprise of my day for sure.
In fact, I might just play the first two as well. I haven't played them in a while, and I never actually finished The Dark Complex.
woot i beat it
Well, I followed some of the hints here and got to the endgame. And then I beat it.
The completed rooms leave a planet icon with either rings, a moon orbiting clockwise, a moon orbiting counterclockwise, or a combination of two of those three things.
Set all the room doors to peephole mode by clicking the circle on their wall in the main room. Then activate the orange button, going to the color mixer circuits.
There, adjust the lines so the colors mix in a way that mirrors the way the planet icons are mixed. The trick is that you don't have to use all the inputs and outputs of the walls. You will not receive confirmation if you are correct, you have to check by pushing the orange button again.
If you did this right, the main room becomes white with a door on the floor, this is the exit.
Drool! I waited years for another installment, then gave up after figuring it was a bit like MOTAS: awesome, but took forever for new levels to appear.
I haven't even played this game yet and already I'm excited!
is a walkthrough in the works? i hope so. :)
The Dark Room 3 Walkthrough
General Notes:
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For the purpose of this walkthrough use this image as a reference for the sides of the cube relative to the button.
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There are 6 colors, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Teal, and Magenta. Each color has it's own puzzle to solve. You can only escape once you solve all the puzzles.
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To enter a room, click the orange button so that the cube has a smooth surface. On that cube there will be a button for blue, red and green. Combine those to make the other three colors. Once a color is over a hole click the orange button again to get back to the other cube mode, and enter a room.
Blue room
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Hint: Something is... Different.
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The hands are all in the same order, except each face of the cube has one hand out of order. bring that hand to the front.
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click the faces of the cube like this: 1x4 2x1 3x2 4x3 5x3 6x4.
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Green room
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Hint: Connect!
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Connect the paths so that one path runs around the 6 faces of the cube.
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Follow these steps to solve, starting with Wall #1.
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Click the back piece
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Click the line, then the back piece
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Click the line
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Click the rear piece twice, then click the new rear piece once
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Click the middle piece once
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Click the back piece (the circle) twice
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Cyan room
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Hint: This room is amazing!
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This room is literally a maze. Just find the exit on the uppermost floor.
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Click on the walls in the following order: 5 5 2 3 2 2 6 3 2 6 3 3 5 5 1 5 1 1 1 4 4 1
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Red room
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Hint: Look out behind you!
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Click on any wall to get started, then click the opposite way the eye is looking. If the eye is looking at you, click on the same face as the eye. Repeat until the room is complete.
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Yellow room
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Hint: Try again!
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Clicking on the button once will show you some organs. Click two more times and it will show you which organs go where, simply remember what organ went on what face of the cube and put them there by clicking on the button two more times.
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Follow these steps to solve, starting with Wall #1.
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Click 5x (Brain)
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Click 2x (Lungs)
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Click 3x (Stomach)
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Click 4x (Heart)
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Click 2x (Liver)
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Click 1x (Kidneys)
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Magenta room
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Hint: Play Matchmaker
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Moving your mouse up, left, or right will cause the shapes to change on the faces. There are 3 matching pairs. Match each pair to complete the room.
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Move the mouse over the symbol on each wall in the following directions: 1=left 2=down 3=right 4=down 5=down 6=left
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The Exit room
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Now that all 6 rooms are completed it's time to find the exit room. First off take note of the flashing, rotating symbol on 4 of the walls in each completed room.
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If you close the door to a room you can peep into it through the tiny hole. You need to be able to see the same symbol through the colored wall as you can in the same-colored room.
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Use the colored panels in the switch room to move the colored walls into the correct positions.
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The correct order, starting from Wall #1, is:
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BLUE
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MAGENTA
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CYAN
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RED
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YELLOW
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GREEN
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The arrangement of the switches, starting from Wall #1 is:
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Bend
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Straight
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Straight
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Bend
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Straight
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Bend
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Click on the orange button when this is correct and the room should be white.
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Exit through the door on the floor to win the game.
It's nice the endgame puzzle wasn't as difficult as the one in the dark complex.
hint for the endgame:
You should be able to figure out what to do after taking note of the symbols in each colored room. The only way to arrange the colors the correct way is to have the rgb walls half uncolored.
Nice game. Good selection of puzzles.
Where's the "Stop all sounds so people don't know I'm goofing off at the office" button? >.>
I agree with Biolaren: this series would be amazing if only it wasn't so ruined by the layout/controls.
Hard puzzles are great, but only if you don't get seasick just by trying to understand what you are looking at and the mouse doesn't try to undo all your work at the slightest tap.
As it is, this is astoundingly unfun.
I actually view the controls as part of the challenge and the fun of the game, and it is part of what makes this series so unique from all the other Flash puzzle games.
If you can't get a grip of the controls easily enough, then this game is definitely not for you. And that's OK. :)
Oh man oh man! These were so hair-pulling back then. I kept trying to make my friends play, "Look! See!" And they would fiddle with it for a second and then look at me like my hair was on fire.
Which it was. Brain overheating.
Wheeeeee!
How am I supposed to figure out where I am if it effing rotates the room at the slightest provocation? This is design for design's sake, or worse, purposely making the interface difficult just to screw with the audience. Thanks, but no thanks.
The game is very simple to control (but it can be disorienting, especially for the uninitiated). Here's what to do:
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Position the mouse in the center of the window, vertically and horizontally, to stabilize control.
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Move the mouse toward one of the edges to move the camera in that direction.
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Then move the mouse back to center to stabilize it once again.
Nowadays, I can go through the original in one sitting without referring to any sort of hints.
#s 2 and 3, however, leave me baffled. The sameness of the 'rooms', and complete lack of reference points, throws my internal compass out of whack -- and I'm one of those rare people who can map locations in my head.
(My wife relies on me to find our parking space, or navigate through government offices.)
Still, nice to see that the original is still up and running, and that May is still coming up with things. I preferred the feel of the first one, without the weird overlays in the third (though the illusion of depth was a nice touch).
The master is back! Hooray!
When I started the game I thought, uh oh, another Complex as complex as Dark Complex, but actually it looks like DC and plays more like DR.
I still consider DC and both Archipelago games to be among the best puzzle games ever made. Glad to see DC3 has the same magic touch.
My poor cerebral cortex may be happy it's not longer, but the rest of me still wants more!
I admit I'm still a bit confused about . . .
. . . the rotating planets in the rooms and on the "plates" in the central room. Had the look of a brain-crunching final megapuzzle, but no. Or is it perhaps an Easter egg?
Anyway, kudos to both Jon and Jay for bringing us this treat. Although, seriously, is it "Johnathan" or "Jonathan" May?
[It's "Jon", and thanks for pointing that out, I missed it during editing. I've corrected the review. -Jay]
Beat it. Thank god this wasn't called "The Dark Tesseract".
This was easier than The Dark Complex.
This games seems to have mixed parts the first and second game and made it into a brilliant new game.
The switch settings for the final step in the walkthrough might be wrong:
It worked when I swapped the settings for wall 3 and 4 ie 3=Straight 4=Bend.
I can't check without playing the entire game again but thought I'd leave a comment for others.
I'm having problems with the Green room. I followed the walkthrough and nothing. So I reset that room and started over. Could the person who made the walkthrough be a little more specific? "Circle" and "horizontal bar" are great, but what about those curved lines? Could you specify WHICH goes into which layer, please?
It would help greatly.
Same problem with the Magenta room. Following the walkthrough doesn't work.
Argh, I just recovered from the last vertiginous nightmare! Why must he hurt us so??
Humorous aside: For some reason this font is bunching the "c" and "l" together. End result? Well, let's just say the words "click" and "clicking" get used an awful lot...
For those who are having trouble with the green room, I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do, but I'm going to give you some advice that will really help you out.
Like you, the walk through did not work for me in that section while I kept trying to rip my hair out solving it. But, I have a few tips you need to do to make it a lot easier to solve.
1. Go to the floor of the puzzle, and make sure that the bottom panel has the circle as the top most piece. From now on, never, ever touch it again.
2. Check the walk through for the location of the panel labeled "one", and try to never alter the pieces there. This actually helps you out by creating a nexus that dictates where everything must flow and overlap.
3. Look at the back most shapes, and just trace them around. Connect and move pieces back to make it flow until you have a singular track to follow. Remember to keep on following rules 1 and 2 as you go. Repeat for the middle lines, and you should end up with the proper solution.
Hopefully that'll help out those who had trouble like I did.
The walkthrough has been updated with a correction to the Green room.
Thank you for the Green Room! I got it now!
I'm sorry but I really didn't like this one, which is a shame for me because I love the rest of the dark series. I'm happy to stick with something for a long time till I get it right, but with the nauseating camera swing and limited visibility it just wasn't enough fun for me to want to spend any more time on it.
The solution for the final room in the walkthrough should be correct now.
Oh God... not a THIRD one!
I need to finish The Dark Complex before I start this one... Thankfully I'm older and less stupid, so maybe I'll do better now...
I think I solved the endgame by accident.
I'd solved the six colors. Just for fun, I wanted to rearrange the paths of red, green, and blue so each one was a single color. After a bit of trial-and-error and the realization that some paths had to have no color at all, I got it done. Then I pressed the orange button again and noticed that the room's highlights were now shimmering strange colors...
Different color, not single color. My bad.
Don't like this one at all.... Camera and controls are very awkward for me, and of what I played of it (couldn't finish it, honestly), the puzzles weren't very fun. :(
HE'S BACK!!! OH MY GOD HE'S REALLY BACK! After Wooly Thinking mysteriously went down and we didn't get a new game for years, I thought Jonathan May was done making games forever! I can't believe he made a new one! And a sequel to THE DARK COMPLEX, the best Flash game I've ever played!
Does anyone know if he has a website? Or contact information of some kind? I just wish I had some way to tell him how brilliant he is lol
Yea I did that too, I was trying to figure out how to make a white room so I could use the hints in the other rooms to solve it, but instead found the exit.
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Walkthrough Guide
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The Dark Room 3 Walkthrough
General Notes:
For the purpose of this walkthrough use this image as a reference for the sides of the cube relative to the button.
There are 6 colors, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Teal, and Magenta. Each color has it's own puzzle to solve. You can only escape once you solve all the puzzles.
To enter a room, click the orange button so that the cube has a smooth surface. On that cube there will be a button for blue, red and green. Combine those to make the other three colors. Once a color is over a hole click the orange button again to get back to the other cube mode, and enter a room.
Blue room
Hint: Something is... Different.
The hands are all in the same order, except each face of the cube has one hand out of order. bring that hand to the front.
click the faces of the cube like this: 1x4 2x1 3x2 4x3 5x3 6x4.
Green room
Hint: Connect!
Connect the paths so that one path runs around the 6 faces of the cube.
Follow these steps to solve, starting with Wall #1.
Click the back piece
Click the line, then the back piece
Click the line
Click the rear piece twice, then click the new rear piece once
Click the middle piece once
Click the back piece (the circle) twice
Cyan room
Hint: This room is amazing!
This room is literally a maze. Just find the exit on the uppermost floor.
Click on the walls in the following order: 5 5 2 3 2 2 6 3 2 6 3 3 5 5 1 5 1 1 1 4 4 1
Red room
Hint: Look out behind you!
Click on any wall to get started, then click the opposite way the eye is looking. If the eye is looking at you, click on the same face as the eye. Repeat until the room is complete.
Yellow room
Hint: Try again!
Clicking on the button once will show you some organs. Click two more times and it will show you which organs go where, simply remember what organ went on what face of the cube and put them there by clicking on the button two more times.
Follow these steps to solve, starting with Wall #1.
Click 5x (Brain)
Click 2x (Lungs)
Click 3x (Stomach)
Click 4x (Heart)
Click 2x (Liver)
Click 1x (Kidneys)
Magenta room
Hint: Play Matchmaker
Moving your mouse up, left, or right will cause the shapes to change on the faces. There are 3 matching pairs. Match each pair to complete the room.
Move the mouse over the symbol on each wall in the following directions: 1=left 2=down 3=right 4=down 5=down 6=left
The Exit room
Now that all 6 rooms are completed it's time to find the exit room. First off take note of the flashing, rotating symbol on 4 of the walls in each completed room.
If you close the door to a room you can peep into it through the tiny hole. You need to be able to see the same symbol through the colored wall as you can in the same-colored room.
Use the colored panels in the switch room to move the colored walls into the correct positions.
The correct order, starting from Wall #1, is:
BLUE
MAGENTA
CYAN
RED
YELLOW
GREEN
The arrangement of the switches, starting from Wall #1 is:
Bend
Straight
Straight
Bend
Straight
Bend
Click on the orange button when this is correct and the room should be white.
Exit through the door on the floor to win the game.
Posted by: Kero
|
February 15, 2011 8:45 PM
The game is very simple to control (but it can be disorienting, especially for the uninitiated). Here's what to do:
Position the mouse in the center of the window, vertically and horizontally, to stabilize control.
Move the mouse toward one of the edges to move the camera in that direction.
Then move the mouse back to center to stabilize it once again.
Posted by: Jay
|
February 16, 2011 12:44 AM