LogFAQs > #969718855

Arti posted...

You haven't played Punch Line yet

And after briefly scanning its wikipedia article I have no plans on doing so!

Whew, it's heating up today. Gaulem Bay has robots! Wearing boxer shorts! I should probably start thinking about what connects all these rooms to each other, this is an odd building. After another pretty long puzzle sequence we are introduced to our new bri'ish robot pal, G-OLM. This friendly chap pretty much confirms that someone will later be revealed to be a gaulem (Quark? K? All 9 of us?), describes himself as an autonomous arm/leg of the mainframe, and tells us a Chinese Room story that will surely come up again but could be interpreted in so many ways that I don't know what to take from it right now (I like that Alice and Luna call out the needless horny mentions in said story though lol).

G-OLM mentions that we probably wouldn't be able to tell a gaulem with artificial skin tissue from a person, then says: "See, right in the middle of-" before being killed for breaking the rules. Argh, this half-line could refer to so many things! My first thought was him pointing to whoever was literally stood in the middle of us 3 and identifying us as a gaulem, but then I thought he was describing a part of the body that would give away someone being one (Dio and Quark both have hats, and we haven't seen K's body at all). He could have been using 'middle' in some other sense, but it seems that word in particular probably triggered his death so it must be crucial.

Phi later makes a big strain to connect this 'middle' to China, wondering if the Nonary games as a whole are some kind of Chinese Room. I've no idea what this would mean if true, are us 9 the girl sending messages we don't understand to a confused outside world, or are we the men outside receiving messages that the sender (Zero?) never understood? What are we misinterpreting? I suppose this game could all be some automated system at this point set long after whoever made it died (if we're all gaulems).

Skipping ahead a bit after the next AB game (I pick ally of course), Alice dies again. But there's no connection to the virus this time, she is presumably killed for noticing something that Clover then notices. K feels a connection with Phi, Quark is missing, and Tenmyouji has opened up to Clover but not to the rest of us. He later tells us he struck some kind of deal with Zero Sr before entering this place, a pretty massive piece of information that he won't elaborate on. We really need to get info on the deal with him/Quark/deadlady soon, it's been teased so much.

The biggest scene today is the reveal that one of the AB boxes had been moved! I am frustrated at myself for not noticing this earlier, I hadn't thought to pay attention to the background visuals like that! But this is massive, it immediately points the finger straight at Luna as a killer... though Sigma quickly brings up several points to the contrary. Someone found the time to shift the container while the rest of us were off somewhere. Siggy, Phi and Luna were together until the corpse was discovered so it can't have been them, I'd have to go back to figure out where everyone else was. Then there's the conspicuously placed bloody handkerchief which had been exposed by the move. Maybe multiple containers were moved to frame Luna, and the one with the corpse belonged to one of the others? But that'd take an awfully long time to do. Maybe Luna did kill the old lady, but someone else moved the container for... some reason. To expose her?

Whatever the case, Clover likely believes Luna to have killed Alice, and sure enough we soon find Luna dead by injection gun. Alice's murder weapon (presumed to be a knife but notably not confirmed) is gone. Both Ten and Clover have motive for this one if either came to the conclusion about Luna, and I wonder if we're headed for another psycho killer Clover ending. We chat with K, Dio remains a one note selfish character for now (I look forward to eventually unpacking his deal), and K forces Phi and Sig into the security room.

I've been checking the flowchart for a while, waiting for the ending to show up, but we get taken into a puzzle room and suddenly the chart has expanded! Yay! I didn't expect this at all, and I'm glad there's so much more of the game than I previously thought. It's exciting that this particular line continues even with half the cast gone (Alice and Luna dead, Quark missing, Ten and Clover possibly killed by penalty). I leave it here for today (I saved just before heading into puzzle mode) as there is a lot to process. There's been some really interesting developments here. I'm growing fond of most of these characters now, I really like Phi and Sig as a detective duo.

Did you folks notice that the AB container moved before the reveal?

I'll leave today with the most important line of dialogue that I should probably take heed of, from Phi:

Just forget any conclusions you might have come up with. Save that brain space for something more useful

I will try, Phi. I will try.