There you are! I've been waiting all week to see you again. What a week, I have to say. I mean that in either a good way, or a not so good way, depending on what applies. But that's all behind us now, for the next three games, all that matters is that zen moment of intense puzzle concentration, shushing away all other thoughts, an escape from worldly concerns...
Gatamari Escape 20 - If you don't read Japanese, you might be put off by the start screen—white kanji letters starkly set against a plain black field. Just click the letter cluster in the bottom left and be pleasantly assuaged by its accessibility. Stuck inside a small, watercolor-hued room with an eclectic assortment of puzzles and two endings, you wonder what devious mind neatly arranged all this. Thankfully, logic and deduction overcome the potential language barrier, assuring freedom for the steadfast. By the way, I see you, "Let It Be" motto sign; I have your Japanese language relative on my sitting room wall.
Escape from the Strange Hotel - Some may prefer Hilton, but when I get away from it all, I want to go to this specialty boutique hotel. Rather than bothering with inconveniences such as paying, I could earn my stay by deciphering codes and rummaging through rooms for puzzles. Per Hottategoya's usual oeuvre, you'll encounter plenty of similar doors, floors and rooms. Overcome the difficulty of navigating them all and escape is quite easy. Strange? Although these accommodations are a far cry from The Stanley Hotel, its eerie emptiness is indeed unsettling. Going up and down stairs and along hallways, sadly, doesn't count as a daily cardio workout.
Chick Hide and Seek 15 - If you're feeling frazzled and needing to chill, here's the perfect place to do it. Caught up in an igloo, play a game of seek and find until you've discovered all ten chicks. There's only a couple puzzles to solve so most your efforts will be put toward contemplating where these tiny cuties could be hidden and just where/how to click to get them to come out. Yuri's brood of downy yellow adorableness is apt to melt even the grouchiest frown. When you're busy saying "Awww," it's hard to care much about anything else.
We love escape games, and our readers love talking about them and sharing hints! How about you? If you think you've found a game that deserves to be featured, use this form to send it to us.
Loved the Gatamari Escape 20 - Thank you! There weren't any other comments or a walkthrough so I couldn't cheat :-) I got out eventually though so it couldn't have been toooo hard..
This is the only place I can think of to ask this: What's with the "N°x" after the title of recent features? Does the number x mean something, or is it just..there?
@Xindaris: I think it's so the features can be enumerated more visibly. The "N °" is supposed to mean "No." Next week's Weekday Escape will be N ° 9.
Okay, I got through everything but the little men. Anyone know how to figure out which shapes go where? I know it has something to with their hands and feet but I am lost as to the right combination.
**facepalm**
NVM. I forgot about
the vat of water
. I am out!
Hmmm, I seem to be stuck on Chick Hide and Seek 15.
I have:
7 chicks and an orange card which I think shows a clue for the shrine(?) view. But no amount of clicking reveals anything
Chick Hide and Seek. I have 8 chicks
a spade
and
a card
Rather stuck.
Strange Hotel. I have the item that goes in the first inventory slot. Completely baffled.
Gatamari. I have the
tape
and
pick-axe(?)
and
weird pink guy
I *thought* I had the corner-box puzzle and the thing to its left, but they're telling me no.
Help, please!
Partial walkthrough for Chick Hide and Seek. The first 8 chicks:
Chick 1
You start off looking at a table. Open the lid of the container on the right side.
Chick 2
Turn right. Click on the thing in the middle of the wall. Click to get the thing out of the way.
Chick 3
Turn right twice. Click on the green boots. If you're color-blind, it's green boots on the left and red boots on the right. Click again to reveal chick in the right boot.
Chick 4
Rustle around in the left coat.
Chick 5
Click the right hat to lift it. Click it again to turn it around.
Chick 6
Turn right twice. Zoom in on the right candle. Note the stars from top to bottom.
big, small, medium, medium, big, small, medium
Turn right. There are three boxes of decreasing size from left to right. Zoom in on the little box. Input the code.
left, right, middle, middle, left, right, middle, then click the bar at the bottom
Click the small box again and get chick and spade.
Chick 7
Zoom in on the flower in the middle of the wall. The pattern on the pot is
green, red, green, red, green
Where else have we seen these colors?
The boots.
Zoom out, zoom in on the big box. Input the code.
left, right, left, right, left, then click the bar at the bottom
Click the big box again and get the chick and rice cake.
Chick 8
Turn right twice. Put the rice cake on the pot in the middle of the table. Along comes a chick. Also get the card from the egg that appears on the rice cake.
On Gatamari, does anyone know
what's up with the ending with the black cat and the fish?
Fun puzzles on that one.
Gabe Puratekuta, you are on to something!
Use the spade on the floor in front of the shrine.
Found the last chick! It's hiding
behind the smallest box.
Thank you, Fred M. Sloniker! :-D
One game down, two to go!
I got out of Gatamari, but I didn't understand:
1.
What the colored doll things were, and why the heck I put them head-down in a tank of water?
2.
Whether the pillars that indicated height for one of the puzzles were gravestones, and whether there was a weird ghost coming out of the third one?
3.
What was up with the evil yellow-eyed cat in the second ending?
If anyone could explain, I'd love to know what was going on.
Ray9na: On Strange Hotel, to unlock floor 3 once you have the paper (first task to accomplish)
Look at the designs on the door numbers.
Some of the corners are not cut off.
There's one that doesn't seem to fit...
Try looking at it from a different angle.
Literally.
Deusovi:
Im doing 202+902+208 but 1312 wont work
?
Deusovi sorry got it now
Thanks, Deusovi! I'm now
in room 106 trying to apply the clue from the second item in the inventory. It's kind of a head-scratcher.
Insight!
It's an escape game. It's all about
the trash cans.
The main thing I don't like about getting these in chunks of three, is that we can't rate them.
You're still welcome to comment with your opinion of them, though. :) I'm always interested in the feedback, especially as I'm out looking for games for the next edition of weekday escape.
I think I'm going to need some help with Gatamari. I've only gotten a little bit further but I'm stuck again.
I've figured out the two puzzles that are on the top shelf to the right of the tapestry (the ones in the screen shot in the review). I had been right about the corner-box puzzle and have no idea why it didn't work yesterday. The other one required
a different perspective.
I also have
a flute
and I found
and placed a ball.
No clue about any of the other puzzles, though, and I have no idea what
Mr. Glowy Head
or
the Dalek helmet
are about.
Lucie, in regards to Number 3:
I think it was an angry cat, because in the second ending you have the fish the cat had on your plate ;)
Sorry, but grouping new game reviews gives a poor, low-cost image. It's ok for things like The Vault, because you still have the individual game pages. But this is terrible: you forgo the rating system, mix up tags, the comment threads get messy... reeks of cheapness. Failed experiment, don't repeat.
any walkthroughs available?
Sorry you don't like it, cu, but I'm sure you'll find something else on the site that works for you. :) The format change is simply because these games would end up in Link Dump Friday otherwise because none of them are strong enough to merit their own feature, and this way there is still a regular weekly escape article. After all, we had gotten rid of WE entirely for almost a year because there was not a reliably high quality game to feature every single week. Further, you can be assured we will always warn you if a game has any potentially objectionable content regardless of whether it has an individual rating or not. You can trust elle not to steer you wrong!
We do not make walkthroughs for games that don't get their own features, so hopefully you clever folks can help each other out! :)
Hi, Dora. I've reread my post and I realized I came on a bit too strong, sorry about that. Of course there are many things I like here, that's the reason I come around often, disable AdBlock and FlashBlock to give back a little and provide comments here and there.
I guess my point is that it doesn't seem that much additional work to take each of those small reviews up there and make a single page out of each other: you gain individual rating, focused tag search, easier to follow discussion, someone can contribute a walkthrough to be featured in the designed place by one of you mods... I find this grouping unnecessarily messy, but maybe it's just me and I am developing some kind of game review OCD :-) .
I, for one, don't see the need for W.E. so I won't miss it if it goes, as long as escapes, stronger or weaker, with longer or shorter reviews appear regularly. Whenever I feel like escaping, not only Wednesdays, the tag system is my friend: I go to jig/flash+escape and Bob's your uncle! All new escapes neatly arranged for me to see what old trusty pals in JIG have found lately. Been compelled to honor the weekly nature of W.E. gets cumbersome if good escapes are scarce. It's not worth the trouble in my opinion.
Hi cu,
I initially suggested we discontinue Weekday Escape last fall because, if a game was really good and it came out too far in advance, it made no sense to wait several days just to put it in Wednesday's WE. As a result, I was left with few options come Monday or Tuesday, when my feature was due. We did kick around the idea of W.E being any day we happened to get a game, but then W.E. is about its regularity and, at that time, about highlighting the game, above all the others, we felt deserved the W.E. spotlight. This time around, I suggested a multigame feature because I felt our readers were missing out on some really fun games that are not quite ready for primetime. As Dora said, these games would most likely go into LDF or not be available at all, but also these games I feel are okay to wait on. Of course, as you point out, there are some disadvantages to doing it this way. After a lot of discussion, though, we felt the downsides were worth the upsides.
Have you had a chance to play these games yet? What are your thoughts about them?
@ ray9na
RE: Gatamari Escape 20
Try combining a couple of the things you have to reach something you can't.
More specifically:
Put some tape on the flute.
Hi, Elle.
I see how fine is the line you have to tread between quality and quantity. But still I don't think aggregation is a good solution.
Maybe a category tag? Something like S, M, L, XL - escapes, depending on the number of puzzles, complexity of the storyline, etc? :) So S-escapes get just a short paragraph, while XL (Submachines, big Neutrals...) get the full epic ode.
Yes, I have played the games. I think Gatamari on its own is absolutely up to usual M-size W.E. standards (Tesshi-es, Tomateas, Robamimis), with the only objection of the lack of an English translation. It definitely has enough original, well-designed puzzles. Translation is not needed at all to complete the game, as it is very expertly designed, but the humorous scenes definitely make me curious about what is being said.
The other two are S-size, but if you have played games from both developers you already expect that. Good enough to merit their own individual, albeit short, review page? I'd tend to say yes if only because they belong to two well-established series.
I don't mind this format at all. I actually like it.
I never really did like the fact that when a really good escape came along, quite often many had already seen it elsewhere by the time Wednesday rolled around. The better games really deserve to be put out as soon as the editors here at JIG can manage.
There are many shorter/smaller escape games out there that are fun to play, but by themselves don't really justify an article for each one. So, we either don't see them, or they end up being posted in Link Dump Friday. If they are posted in LDF (and several like this have been in the past) you have the same situation...no rating, mixed tags, and mixed comments. It's never been a problem there, because most are simpler games. Just think of the new Weekday escape as a Link Dump Friday dedicated to escape games.
Doing it this way means that we will have the better escapes in a more timely fashion and more of the simpler, but fun, escapes.
I love some of these little escapes. But any more, if they aren't on JIG, I probably am not going to see them because I hate wading through all the cr...um...lesser games that some other sites post. Most will post ANYTHING. And even trying to go by the ratings on other sites leaves me playing many games that I truly don't enjoy. Several developers go for quantity over quality. A new game posted everyday, but no substance. Very few puzzles, and what little puzzling there is gets repeated, over and over. I appreciate the fact that the editors at JIG have taken the time weed out the games that are playable and enjoyable.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the continued feedback, Itt and cu! It's comments like yours that help me know what the JIG audience wants to see. Mushroom ratings alone doesn't tell me why a game is liked or not, or how much it is liked.
Yes, I was on the verge of giving the Gatamari game its own review but, well, other factors came up and ultimately I decided to keep it in WE this week. I will keep your comments in mind and will be sure to take more chances and give these kinds of games their own features.
But, I have to stand by my decision to keep Chicks 15 and Strange Hotel in WE. While I felt they were very much worth playing, the JIG community is pretty honest about rating games and hold high standards for 4 and 5 mushroom scores. So, those two would've ended up in LDF anyway...provided they weren't pushed out due to Dora already have a long list of more worthy LDF entries (like, all that pony and gory stuff, you know?).
Just my two cents ... I love the Weekday Escape but noticed that the popularity seemed to be declining ... so I was really happy to see three at a time (similar to the Link Dump Fridays, which sometimes contain an escape or a point-and-click). Am a bit flabbergasted at some of the posts, as I am thrilled that reviewers of the caliber of Elle and GrinnyP continue to do such a wonderful job of keeping us all entertained, not only with the games they find, but also with their witty reviews. I say, keep up the good work and don't feed the trolls, J.I.G.!!
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