The story behind Alpinist Escape, by Pine Studios (formerly Just Pine Games) and also free for iOS and Android, is you and your friends go skiing for the first time and your group discovers a cabin. As you walk in you hear the door lock behind you and then presumably the giggles and snorts of your friends as they run off into the cold darkness that is the winter night. Long story short, you need some new friends. If you enjoy solving puzzles and escaping then they are the most thoughtful friends on the earth, because that is exactly what you need to do. The pleasant, soft music and the witty things said when you pick up items are kind of pushing the more happier story where in the end instead of calling the cops or getting in a large fist fight, it will more likely be laughter all around and pats on the back. Alpinist Escape is simple, short, but cheery enough to keep you warm no matter what room you've been locked in.
Alpinist Escape doesn't have as many riddles as an average point-and-click game does, most of the puzzles revolving around finding out what items works with what in the room. You can see a logic behind most of them, even if it doesn't always have to follow the real laws of physics, but you shouldn't be stuck for long. If you are, don't forget that using force is an option. All items you can interact with will pop up text on screen, which can cause a slight issue if you're not actually reading because clicking on either side of the screen will switch your view to another wall. There are a lot of interesting items in these areas that you can't actually look at, so if you don't read what you're about to click on, you can find yourself spinning in circles for a while. But in this cozy atmosphere, wasting a bit more time to look at the lovely decorated cabin can be counted as a blessing.
Alpinist Escape (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)
Android:
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Walkthrough Guide
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WALKTHROUGH
1)
Somehow we're in a cabin. I don't know guys. I...'m not woodsy at all. I don't even like the birds in my backyard all that much. (Mostly because they taunt my cats and some of the bigger birds are a little TOO unfrightened of humans and IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, alright? I have a right to be scared, Judgey McJudgerson. Why don't you go and watch that documentary I watched, "The Birds," which is a true story that actually happened and man, Alfred Hitchcock was NOT kind to Tippy Hedron AT ALL.)
Look, the point is, we're in a cabin. We're in a cabin, facing a wall with a glowing snowman who HAS to be up to no good, and a painting of what I'm assuming is a warlock because why ELSE can't we just go to the front door of the cabin, hail a cab, and get home in time for 'Reign'?
If you click on the painting -- and I'm not suggesting you should because, as we JUST discussed, it's a warlock, I'm sure of it, so why don't you ever listen to me? -- you'll note that there's an outline of a key in it. We probably need a knife. A knife to cut out the key and to attack whatever else is in the cabin with us. There was this other time where we had to stab a pirate mouse in a barrel to get a train ticket from an owl and that all still haunts me.
There's also a bag on the floor by the fireplace that I honestly thought was a homonculous and was prepared to just NOPE it all together. But clicking on it tells us that, for reasons I can't explain, we're unable to open the bag with our bare hands. Probably because we were drugged, like in that documentary I saw, "Hostel," about the hotel industry in Eastern Europe and -- spoiler alert -- IT DOESN'T END WELL.
There's an unlit candle on the fireplace we can take. We're well-established kleptos at this point, right? Just take it.
If you click the fireplace, we learn that we can build a fire. I mean, we can't right NOW -- but, I'm assuming, soon. Why not just burn this whole cabin to the ground, though, and leave, phoenix-like, from the ashes, and vow never to awaken in a strange location from which we must escape ever again?
Let's go right.
2)
A Christmas tree! Yay! Unless we learn later that those ornaments contain the trapped souls of those who have tried to escape before. Then boo! But for now yay! ::deep sigh::
There's a jacket we can steal. It doesn't appear to be ours. We didn't see it and then think, "Oh, yeah, my coat." We just thought, "Thank goodness there's something else for me to steal from this place" because we're, apparently, socoiopaths, like Kenny from Broadmoor (look it up and then call me so I can comfort you).
Weirdly enough, when you click the tree, you learn that there are presents under it! Presents! But then you think, "Oh, I'd better not take them. They're not for me." Because NOW you develop a conscious? WHATEVER, VERSION-OF-ME-TRAPPED-IN-A-CHALET.
Your bout of morality is short-lived, though, because you steal those skis with a QUICKESS.
There's nothing left to steal or do here. Let's go right again.
3)
That view out the window makes it pretty clear how isolated you are -- like in that documentary I saw, "The Shining," which is all very true.
You can walk up to the window. Still looks bleeping bleak out there. You'll notice a fist in your inventory. That's called "force." Use the fist on the window and you can now take an icicle. "I used to like to eat this stuff as a kid," you mutter in a rage-fueled haze.
Oh, go ahead and break off a piece of a tree. It's not a human, but I hope it's enough destruction for the moment to cool your blood-lust, you trapped monster.
You can also steal an electric cable from below the window. Why not? (I shudder to think what you'll do with it later.)
You steal some soap.
WHY? WHY ARE YOU STEALING SOAP? WE LOVE YOU AND WE WANT YOU TO GET SOME HELP.
And we get our first puzzle. A row of colors that don't change, and a row of numbers we can change, from 1-9. Since we haven't stolen something that says, "Here are all the solutions," we should keep looking to see what more we can steal/learn.
You guys realize we can never tell anyone else about what we did in this cabin, right? All the stealing? That HAS to stay between us.
Let's go right.
4)
Ah. There's the door we no doubt can't just walk up to, open, and leave. It's never that simple.
There IS a frying pan on the wall and this time, guys, I am being DEAD SERIOUS: When you take that pan, you learn that you plan to bash your friends in the head with it when you get out of here.
That...'s an interesting moral quandry. Do we free ourselves, knowing we're going to unleash vengeance on the world? Or do we quietly close this tab and just...
Fine. We'll free ourselves. But this says WAY more about you than it does about me.
There's a stick by a chest on the right that we can also use in the case of we somehow break that pan in two from all the whacking that's now crowding our "To Do" list.
There's also a locker, above the chest, that is, like it says on the tin, locked. We'll need a key no doubt. How come no one in these houses just has a key rack by the front door, with each key neatly labeled? WHY ARE PEOPLE MONSTERS AND ALSO THE WORST?
Let's go right.
5)
And we're back at the start. Here's what we have in our inventory:
A fist (called "Force")
An unlit candle
A stolen jacket
Some stolen skis
Icicle
Stick
Cable (to strangle someone with? Probably!)
Soap
A frying pan
And another stick
You are now officially the weiedest hobo. Congratulations! You did it!
6)
Let's see what we can do with some of the stuff we've purloined.
That tree we saw earlier had lights on it. 'member? I thought they might be the trapped souls of previous occupants? They still might be, but I think we can also light them.
Go to the tree and use that cable on it. I know, I know: I wanted us to strangle the life out of someone, too, but we don't always get what we want, like that time I REALLY wanted a tarantula, and it was only $15, and I BEGGED my mom, but she said no, and I think a lot of who I am, now, as a person, sort of settled into place when-- oh, nevermind. You guys don't want to hear me jawing away about my childhood.
Do you? I'm so lonely, guys.
Anyway, we lit the tree, we didn't strangle someone (next time, li'l buddy, I promise) and now there are colors! And we have a puzzle that uses colors, don't we? Let's count the colors:
Red = 6
Green = 3
Yellow = 1
Blue = 7
Oh. Here's a fun thing to learn about your new BFF Maude: I don't see colors very well! You're WELCOME!
Let's go to that puzzle in the chest.
7)
Well, that's no good. We need to find, like, a billion other colors in this room to solve this.
Of course, I think we can blend colors? Like, isn't orange a combo of red and yellow? (And you thought I WASN'T paying attention in primary school! HA!) And red and blue make purple? With that in mind, I think we just need to figure out how many orange lights we COULD have, if we mix a red and orange. Same with purple. This is how we get this:
Red = 6
Green = 3
Blue = 7
Yellow = 1
Orange = 1
Purple = 6
Oh look: a digusting pair of shoes. Of COURSE we'll need those! Why, I bet with a fire in the fire place and that pan, we can make the most DELICIOUS meal of fried old shoe.
You guys'll totally watch my cooking show on the Food Network, right? Semi-Hobo with Maude Buttons? You're the best!
8)
So, we've pilfered all we can and we don't, yet, have a knife. This is going to make stabbing people later a little bit tough. But it also means: what do we do with that key that I thought was stuck in the painting?
Well, it turns out it's not stuck. It...'s -- I don't know. I DON'T KNOW. Just use the soap on it to make an impression iin the soap and trust me for just ONCE IN YOUR LIFE.
We now have soap with a key-shaped impression. That pre-school art class actually DID come in useful!
9)
Oh, hey. We have two sticks and we have a fireplace. Let's do this.
Click the sticks, click the fireplace, and et voila. I bet we can light that candle from this.
"I've never lit a candle in this way," you say, and I say, "Settle down there, Romeo."
Also, if you click the shoes and the pan like I suggested earlier, nothing happens, so that idea's a bust (so far). But if you click the icicle and the pan, you get a pan with an icicle in it. Put that on the fire, and we get water.
You're supposed to pour the boiling water into the soap which seems like a TERRIBLE IDEA. I mean, it's tough to rank all the terrible ideas in this game because there are SO. MANY. But seriously: you don't have a strong enough hand to open a SACK, but you can steadily pour boiling water onto soap that will SURELY MELT?!
I'm done with this game, guys.
10)
Okay, I'm not. Let's take our weird soap mold to that window we open and freeze the water.
This freezing happens INSTANTLY, by the way. Now, as you may or may not know, I slept through most of Mr Steidel's 7th grade science class and have a long-standing fued with Neil deGrasse Tyson (he won't even entertain my theories of crystal healing and alchemy), but even *I* know that it shouldn't be THAT quick. But it is, and if you click the soap again you've got an ice key so you'd better hurry! HURRY!
11)
Weirdly, the ice key works on the front door! Yay! We're done! We're done with this game!
CONGRATULATIONS! We did it, guys! We-- what? We didn't? But we found the key and everything?
12)
Fine. Click the door. It opens, but you'll be cold. So click the coat, click the door, and we're outside and OH MY GOD IS THAT A SNOWMAN WITH A KNIFE IN HIS NOSE?
13)
Yes. Yes, that is a snowman with a knife in his nose.
14)
You can take the knife from his nose and he *doesn't* come to life. Yay?
You can also take the rope from his body and he won't then grab you.
These games have made me far too anxious about everyday things. I mean, why SHOULD a snowman with a knife for a nose and bound by ropes cause me ANY alarm AT ALL?
15)
You also notice some water outside. It...is? -n't? Frozen? I don't know. You can't walk on it now, even if you put the stolen hobo shoes on. You CAN put the skis on the water and it forms a bridge.
But you can't cross the bridge because it's too dark.
OH. And: there's a cliff right there, too. But nothing terrible ever happens on cliffs, right?
At least things can't get any worse, though.
16)
THINGS GOT WORSE, GUYS.
Use the candle on the darkness to find someone's wallet just out in the snow. SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED JUST STEPS FROM YOUR HAUNTED CHALET.
The wallet has a key. Maybe we can use it on the locker. Let's go back inside that awful awful cabin.
17)
We can and we did and we got an ice axe which seems like a TERRIFIC idea: you're now an armed kleptomaniacal sociopathic hobo. ALL OF YOUR DREAMS ARE COMING TRUE!!! (You remember: the dreams the spider whispered to you, but it was in Esperanto?)
While we're here, and while we have a knife, and since there's STILL no one to stab, let's go try to cut open that bag I thought was a humunculous.
When you open the bag, you discover an ice clipper and you say, "I'm afraid of where this is going." THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU THIS WHOLE TIME, SOCIOPATHIC HOBO!
18)
We'll go back outside -- which means clicking the coat on the door again. Head to the cliff, which means clicking the shoes on the cliff. And now you can combine the ropes with the ice clipper. And NOW you can combine all of that with the ice axe.
With all of that, you can now climb down the cliff! But you're so angry! I can't even begin to imagine what you will do to the first person you meet when you get to the bottom.
NOW you did it! Congratulations! Your reward is a disturbing final image of that snowman, bound in rope, near the head of a stone idol. May God have mercy on ALL of our souls.
Posted by: Maude Buttons
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December 20, 2014 11:16 AM