Game Projects

Town

You start out in the town, specifically your father's Swiftroot farm. The farm here establishes the opening story but also has at least one use inside the maze as well.

Swiftroot farm

Library -- you need to dye your clothing a specific set of colors to enter here, at which point you can travel freely between the Stair and the Library because of some special magic thing.

Recruitment station -- or whatever it's called. This starts the Stair adventure whenever you get bored farming.

Fisherman -- trying to catch golden squid to meet a naiad. Will be important later.

Swiftroot Farm

You're a farmer's son, so until you decide to go out (and get recruited) you're doing rote farming chores:

Swiftroot farming -- Swiftroot takes four days to go from seed to crop, and there are four fields that are on rotation, so you're doing various menial tasks herein. All of the Swiftroot produced here goes to the army.

Garden -- there's a small garden area where you and your father source plant-based foods.

Ungul -- you have an Ungul, which is kind of a myriad domesticated animal that produces both wool and milk. You need to milk it and shear it.

Shed -- There's implements in here that turn milk into cheese, repairs clothing from harvested wool, and stores your bucket, shears and gardening/farming tools, all of which are locked to the area.

Root Cellar -- stores various foods.

Kitchen -- allows you to prepare various foods.

Hovel -- contains both of the above rooms and also has a bed to sleep in to start the next day of chores and some interesting bits of Naiad lore, and whatever else makes sense for the area.

The supplies of everything rotate and food definitely gets consumed, with the chores referencing whatever is available.

You have to do at least a couple days -- it establishes the overarching story. Past that point you're allowed to wander the town or continue doing chores forever.

Recruitment

Whatever way you sign up for this, your father makes you a really ramshackle sword in the shed. It looks amazing to you, but the other recruits laugh at it.

The new recruiting policy requires both a sword and a magic spell -- you don't know this so you get greeted with a keyboard to enter a magic word and obviously can't perform since you don't know anything. After one failure you're informed of this and your rival-thing tells you to go to the library for basic hand-me-down spells or ask your farmer-father (or maybe the library guard says that)

If you go there, you get the finery clothing requirement thing.

Your father tells you to ask the fisherman since he knows some sea-lore.

The fisherman tells you what he's doing (catching a golden squid is this whole convoluted fish-eating-fish process). In any case, he tells you to ask a naiad and gives you directions to a local river one.

Naiad Stuff

This river area is kind of a forking maze and going in at any point requires a specific set of directions or you just go back to shore lost woods style. You're not going to find the right fork and path by accident. The river might be important later on as well.

In any case, following the fisherman's directions will bring you face to face with a Naiad. These all have names with W, Y and lots of vowels. Since everyone is a son of a naiad, your mother has a specific naiad name, and you have a sister as well (unnamed for now) -- these are subtly implied.

Something in here implies that it's ironic you don't know any spells, given your mother's name -- this is draped largely in lore but your mother's name *is* the spell.

Stair Intro

In order to pass into recruitment, you have to complete a challenge known as The Stair -- a simulacrum that was designed for new recruits. You have to both live through the experience *and* speak your family spell at a special rock wall. This ends up being impossible at which the story really kicks off, but you have a goal at least.

There's a planar area known as Stairspace that houses copies of the Stair for all recruits. These are in various states of completion obviously and there's a gleaming golden completed one for inspiration out in the distance -- this is actually important to the game once you acquire the Telescope -- there are useful clues inside of it.

In any case, your Stair gets constructed and the real game begins.

The Stair

The stair is a spiral staircase with multiple floors:

A floating floor(s) that you can't reach yet.

The starting floor, which has an inactive library portal. This along with the incomplete and completed stairs out in the distance are the Interactables.

A floor with Red, Brown and Purple doors (one of each)

A floor with three ornate doors -- one based on spirals, one on triangles and one on rectangles.

A floor where a silver door marked with an owl stands open and there are two other silver doors marked with a bear and snake.

A flooded area where there are additional floor(s) that you can't access yet (you have to either kill the water level or get better at holding your breath or something)

Movement is up and down here (and out of the Stair at the entrance).

Owl Passageway

This passageway forms in twain, the left side being indicated for "wisdom" while the right side is indicated for "claws".

There's an interactable here -- an inset key mold that you can apply a lot of heat to when key pieces are inside.

Claws

This room has a person made out of rock that tests your combat skills, rewarding you the looped half of the red key.

When you first fight them, you can deal damage, but when it's their turn to attack, you can't dodge and just get idle/stand still/take it/flail type commands.

At that point the battle stops and the guardian informs you that you'll need Boots for proper combat.

It tells you to find fine foxfur or sealskin or Lizscales or something equivalent and bring it here so it can make you Boots -- in reality you need to go shear some Ungul. There's probably a couple cutscenes on the way to do this -- your rival informing you of a stupidly easy battle and some child's play book puzzle as well as whatever the next task in the Stair is.

In any case, once you have your boots, you can fight the enemy in earnest. The battle is quite hard (contrary to what your rival says) and you really need to be good at dodging or the fight will stop, your health will reset and you can try again. Part of the problem here is that your sword sucks and your rival's definitely doesn't. That'll improve later.

Wisdom

This is a mini-library with six books:

Red

Purple

Blue

Green

Yellow

Orange

Each book has six numbered indentations on it.

Each book is an interactable and you can either read it or depress one of the indentations (only one can be active at a time)

There's a book-number combination lock puzzle going on here, and the clues for the answer are within the books themselves (one of which lies once). I'll detail the puzzle below:

Red Door

This is a navigation hell that gives you the snake silver key along with the triangular key.

1 -- 2,3,4

2 -- 5,3,6

3 -- 1,8,9

4 -- has a blue switch and goes to rooms 10,11 but they're both behind green barriers, as well as 3.

5 -- loops back to 1

6 -- 2,1, and 12 (behind a blue barrier)

7 -- DNE (oops)

8 -- 2,13,4

9 -- 1,6,1 (basically a dead end)

10 -- 4,9,6

11 -- triangular key

12 -- 14,15

13 -- snake silver key

14 -- 5,1

15 -- a green switch, then goes to 1

Each room is visually distinct, but they're all labeled "Red Room ?" so you have to use the visual clues. The entrance room tells you there's two things hidden within the red maze.

Passageways meanwhile are just \\\\ and |||| and ////

Triangular and Snake rooms

These rooms are heavily related to one another, as you get both keys at once. They also have their own thing going on, and the maze starts really opening up afterwards. Also more combat.

The main part of the snake room is the snake puzzle, whose answers you have to glean from the Library (and you'll start doing this a lot) + a clue elsewhere in one of their complexes.

Meanwhile the triangular room has a dye station and the clue for what to dye your clothing is scattered around both complexes.

The dye station can also dye other items (this will be important later). You can't dye keys.

You have to move through both complexes together, which form a classical maze that I'll detail in a bit. The things you gain from it are clues for the snake puzzle and the dyed clothing puzzle, which collaborates with the library.

Beating the snake puzzle gives you the Eel Suit, which lets you explore open passageways below the water (a separate mechanism will lower the water level so you can access the doors here, possibly multiple times).

Combat Note

If you die during combat (likely!), the first time you'll drag yourself out of the fight. From there you have to limp backwards to the entrance, taking real time and occasionally needing to rest.

Back at the entrance someone will give you item which lets you just exit a battle and retry it. It being your rival makes a certain amount of sense.

Below the water line: Basic Stuff

The Eel Suit lets you traverse parts of the Stair below the water.

There are two floors down here. The first one contains a blue door, a cyan door and a turquoise door. The lower one contains a big central passageway, an inactive Nexus that goes to Mer Town and the Water Switch.

Starting out, everything is underwater. You can only go into doors if they *aren't* underwater. The passageway works both ways but you can only reach high up areas if it's underwater.

The Water Switch will change the water level between everything being underwater, everything being dry and a middle state where there's (eventually) traversable waterfalls.

You have access to the Water Switch from the outset, provided you solve its riddle.

The big mechanic for this section is Fishing, as well as obtaining/using Shells in Mer Town (and finding it in the first place) which influences that mechanic. You'll be moving frequently between the Stair, Mer Town and the Library as you solve these puzzles. There are convenient links to both of the external locations at least.

There are both underwater and above water (and maybe even waterfall!) enemy encounters.

I'll detail all of these mechanics in their own sections.

You gain the Salmon Suit at some point which allows you to traverse waterfalls.

The ultimate end goal of this section is obtaining the Brown Key.

Water Switch Puzzle

This requires inputting separate commands to mess with the water level in a spell-like way. The solutions are provided as three separate riddles, with the underwater one providing both the riddle and the answer, which is as good as you're going to get as far as instructions go.

Riddles

Drowned

Flowing

Drought

Drowned Solution

This gives you both the riddle and the words that lead up to it. The other two you have to figure out on your own.

You also don't know what the water switch does initially which makes these puzzles a bit harder.

Each type of clue is also color-coded so you can sort of figure out what the maze wants from you.

Riddles -- initial word: "riddles"

Dridles -- something about moving a single letter to make the first three letters dri-er

Driwnes -- dales darken as the moon... (wanes)

Drownes -- there's something between I and you

Drowned -- without vowels, I'm sad.

Flowing Solution

Drowned -- initial word: the word that makes the lower stair aquatic.

Drowend -- move a single letter to make the ending three more final

Drowing -- a bird that wends is aloft on its... (wings)

Flowing -- going to a door in motley without a key in hand makes one a... (fool)

Drought solution

Drowned -- identical to the Flowing clue.

Drownei -- a djinni without its folk is still something

Drownht -- gravity without 9.01, but that without gees.

Drought -- one letter halved, its neighbor turned velar (a different color than the other clues)

Fishing: initial stuff

Somewhere in the Eel area you get a bundle of golden squid. This gets traded to the Fisherman in return for his fishing rod (he'll buy another) and directions to Mer Town.

Fishing doesn't require bait, thank god. There is however a Hooks aysrem that's required to make fish more likely to catch, which is pretty damn important. This is a library-based puzzle -- more on this in the Bait section. There's also a Lures system that makes certain fish more likely to be caught -- also heavily library-based.

Mer Town is findable in the river like the lone naiad was. They're a separate species from naiads, who they see as abominations -- basically cursed humans rather than true people of water. Probably some decent lore here. I'll cover Mer Town in its own section.