The escape game scene may be crowded nowadays, but there's always room for more. New developer SARAMEYA has entered the scene with Lodger, a curious white and black room the likes of which no ordinary house would contain. If the strangely patterned door, the pipes sticking out of the opposite wall, and the row of unusual paintings don't set the mood, the three eccentric characters waiting behind the three shutters certainly do. As delightful as your company may be, you'd really like to leave the room, so get your thinking cap on and keep an eye out for clues that could lead, directly or indirectly, to your egress.
SARAMEYA's particular brand of surrealism should instantly call Mateusz Skutnik's work to mind, and in the best way. Although the decor is odd, and the characters are odder, the logic is anything but odd; all the puzzles have the perfect blend of sense and obscurity to provide a challenge that's neither mind-numbingly easy nor hair-pullingly hard, neither blink-and-you'll-miss-it short nor leave-it-open-all-week long. Clues are used and reused, the cursor changes when appropriate, and the inventory interface is intuitive (click an item to select it for use, click the pink bar to examine an item up close). There's not even a language barrier; the developer may be Japanese, but everything in-game is in perfectly readable English. To sum up, Lodger is a delightful and relaxing ride, and a good candidate for filling up a half-hour break, and we hope SARAMEYA comes up with more escape games of this quality.
Walkthrough Guide
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Walkthrough
Looking around
Door wall
A door with 5 panels and a handle
Window wall
Three shuttered windows: ngu (wants money), suni (won't open) and poku (wants you to solve a puzzle)
Right hand chest of drawers with keyholes
Middle chest of drawers with 4 digit code, screwed shut drawer and 4 letter code
Left hand chest of drawers with 4 keyholes, 4 letter code and two button code
Pipe wall
Go up... and view the pattern on the floorboard
Check out the bottom left pipe - there's a piece of paper (with some sort of code on it) and "scytale" - I wonder what a scytale is...
Picture wall
Four pictures of objects with captions
Problems that can be solved straight away
poku's puzzle
It seems like the red lines should all match. Easy enough, but what does it show?
Some kind of map?
What do we have 3 and 4 of?
The lines show an order in which to look at pictures. There must be a picture hidden behind each window. We'll have to wait to find out what they are.
As there are 7 pictures, I wonder what sort of puzzle needs 7 somethings in order?
Behind poku is a picture with the caption "railroad".
Number puzzle
The fact that I've told you you can already solve it is a huge spoiler already - sorry.
We need 4 digits
Where have we seen four of something?
The four pictures contain different numbers of objects
9 hearts, 9 lips, 5 leaves, 3 lemons
We now have a key.
It opens a drawer
There is a code with numbers
What could the numbers be referring to?
Maybe something to do with the bells around suni?
4 letter puzzle
There are actually two drawers that need 4 letter codes.
We have a clue with the coded sheet.
It happens to be morse code, but we don't need to know morse code
Where have we seen something that could look like morse code?
Looking down at the floorboards
Reading from left to right
and top to bottom
--- .--. . -.
O P E N
Which drawer does it open?
Middle drawer of the left most chest.
And we get a key
It opens the middle locked drawer to reveal a strip of paper with letters on it. Must be some kind of code.
What could we do with a strip of paper. Why is it a strip?
Puzzles that needed additional clues/items
suni
Needs to have solved the digit code
From it we opened a drawer and got a piece of papers with numbers
The numbers show the order of the bells (and knocking on the shutter)
When you click on the monster, it gets out of the way to reveal a picture captioned "rock"
other 4 letter puzzle
Needs to have solved the first 4 letter puzzle
We have a strip of paper with letters
Did we ever find out what scytale means?
Wrap the strip of paper around the tubing
pass is PASS
We get another key
It opens the bottom locked drawer to reveal a coin. What could we use a coin for?
Besides paying ngu - who doesn't seem happy with just one coin?
There are no screwdrivers in this game
drawer that's screwed shut
We need something to unscrew it. But we don't find any screwdrivers
We need to have solved both letter codes
We got a coin
Which we use to unscrew the drawer
We now have three coins!
Paying ngu
Need to have unscrewed the screwed shut drawer
Behind ngu is the picture of a root.
Two button code
Need to have opened poku, suni and ngu (actually, it could be solved just from poku, but probably not how the author intended)
As an afficionado of escape games, you know this is a left right code
But what could be a left right clue? We don't seem to have many unused clues left
Could it be related to the map?
What do all the pictures of the map have in common?
Root, Love, Lips, Leaf, Rock, Railway, Lemon
R, L, L, L, R, R, L (and press the bottom button for ok)
(or just consider the map as representing right and left, reversed)
We now have four keys
Something to do with a drawer with four locks?
The keys look a bit weird, don't they?
Drawer with four locks
Need four keys
Which key goes with which lock?
The keys look like letters
FLEI
The drawer says picture and gives numbers
What do the pictures have
captions
nth letter of each caption
LIFE
And we now have a fifth key
And the door needs 5 keys
The door
Needs all five keys
But which key goes where?
the panels have O FI FO TH TW
ONE FIVE FOUR THREE TWO
The keys have spikes
Posted by: Gregory Dyke
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April 5, 2015 2:06 PM