Gameplay and hints

gummbum on 2021/09/26 06:13 of GD-32

Start the infamous day in the lab with Al Gore. Interrogate him by clicking on him. Al gives some dubious information, but it's all you have to go on. The Information Superhighway has been clogged. An A.I. without access to all that data is as dumb as Al Gore. Follow the clues to figure out how the crime is done, stop it from escalating, and undo the principle damage to restore functionality to your A.I. You have only a few hours to figure it out before it starts all over again. It's your only hope of escaping the horribly monotonous time loop.

Mechanics. You get five game hours to solve the puzzle. Completing a critical plot element advances the clock one hour. Take anything that looks useful and add it to your utility belt. Some grabbable items can be combined; grab an item and click it atop another to create a hybrid item. Items can also be used on objects and people in the environment; grab the item and click it atop the target item to perform an action.

But beware. Not everything is essential, and some things have their short season. The various activities consume precious time, so prioritizing your day is critical to solving the mystery.

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gummbum on 2021/09/26 06:14:

Hint 1. Stevens is the prime suspect. Interrogate him to find out what he knows. Use the rest of your first day to explore the environment. Grab every object you can and put it on your belt.

You will need a special hybrid tool to unlock the door and get into Stevens' basement.

SPOILER

Get a mushroom from the fridge and combine it with the wrench to create the special hybrid B&E Supertool.

gummbum on 2021/09/26 06:14:

Hint 2. After interrogating Stevens and searching Gore's basement it should become clearer that Gore is withholding. After exploring the environment you'll have noticed Gore disappears from the lab and is nowhere to be found. If you figure out during your first day how to create a hybrid tool that you'll need, and solve a couple of the trivial puzzles, you'll exhaust the day and reset. Then it is time to get to work using the knowledge you've gained.

gummbum on 2021/09/26 06:15:

Hint 3. You should have concluded Stevens is a red herring. He is a dimwit, and simply a waste of your precious time. Clearly someone is setting him up to take the fall for destroying the Information Superhighway.

Where does Gore go? Unfortunately he vanishes when you're out chasing his inconvenient leads. What would happen if you stop him before he leaves the lab? Well, since you're stuck here watching him, day in and day out, reading the same newspaper, fiddling with the same Weatherman(tm) Climate Change watch, and sneaking out, what would it hurt? Just go ahead and whack him.

gummbum on 2021/09/26 06:15:

Hint 4. With Gore out of the way, you now have a few choices.

You can hijack that empty dump truck parked outside Stevens' house, but it will just be replaced with another one. Best wait until it has its intended payload, then hijack the whole shebang.

You can unclog that small jam of messages in Gore's basement. They look like a failed and abandoned attempt, before he moved up to dump trucks. But you will need a special hybrid tool for that.

But in what order?

Decisions, decisions...

(The next comment is the game spoiler.)

gummbum on 2021/09/26 06:16:

Hint 5. Here is the order of events that resolves the temporal anomaly.

The two time critical events are:

1. If you miss whacking Gore he is free to do his mischief. Gore disappears in the second hour.

2. If you miss the full dump truck it dumps its payload on the Informatin Superhighway, permanently clogging the tubes and destroying the world as a result. The dump truck has a short window, the third hour, in which it is filled and leaves.

The golden path:

1. Get the crowbar.

2. Whack Gore with the crowbar.

3. Get the mushroom from the fridge and combine it with the wrench to make the B&E Supertool.

4. Use the crowbar to hijack the dump truck full of dirty political emails.

5. Use the B&E Supertool on the message clog.