<\/div>So rather than get mired in the level’s specifics, let me break it down for you. We’ve got to find four hidden levers in this sprawling cavernous maze, as well as an as-yet-unidentified solution to an as-yet-unidentified puzzle, to reach the egress. There’s a demiglaze of lore over all this that I don’t think anyone is reasonably expecting me to follow, except the incensed nerd who would under normal circumstances be writing a comprehensive rebuke at this very moment–<\/em>although one benefit of playing this game is that there’s very few with firsthand experience of the game and perishingly few who understood what was going on. Anyway, I’ll throw a bone and say we might get into the lore a bit later–if I live long enough.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, in practical news, there’s a big fat sword hanging out in this room acting suspiciously casual<\/em>. I push it into the floor, and–as you’d expect–a huge cracked table slides into two pieces. This reveals…a boiler plate? A riot shield?<\/p>\n For quite some time, I thought the answer was “nothing much.” One of the more pervasive nuisances in this game is that the “pick up or interact with object” field in the center of the screen is both invisible and a pixel in diameter. If they’d meant to make a game based on the classic 1990 film Ghost<\/em>, wherein Patrick Swayze has to bust an undead blood vessel to nudge a shoe or lay hands on a person, they were off to a pretty good start. So I stand staring down at the handle portion of the floor platform for about a minute, making minute adjustments, until finally the grip was exactly in the center of the screen. Turns out it was a lever–arguably the most challenging lever I’ve come across in twenty years of gaming. That’s the kind of specific delight and whimsy only Battlespire<\/em> can offer, provided one’s already mastered the shaped-holes-and-blocks franchise.<\/p>\n Having exhausted this wing, I double back around to the other half of the level. Soon after descending a staircase to a network of tunnels that form, at a guess, the true name of the Adversary, I come across this happy little pier. Turns out all those aforementioned playland tunnels are half-flooded with water. As peace offering to the lore fans, two quick theories:<\/p>\n 1.) This is the Battlespire’s failed waterpark.<\/p>\n 2.) I’m not the first adventurer to come through. These are tears.<\/p>\n Either way, I clamber into the boat and get a-canoe’in. Now, I’ve mentioned earlier that there was a brief vehicle segment where I paddled around in a very similar vessel that:<\/p>\n Well, I’m happy to report that this boating segment:<\/p>\n This is what we in the understatement biz call “an escalation.”<\/p>\n Since I’m immune to any kind of ranged damage I’ve discovered thus far, I’m not worried about the unfair sniping bastard enemies. I would have been perfectly happy to It’s a Small Spire <\/em>merrily past their dopey, self-immolating asses. But I never get the opportunity, because about ten seconds in I get my boat lodged on a rock, figure this is the sort of thing that’s always going to not stop happening, and make me an executive decision: abandon fucking ship<\/em>. I will doggie-paddle through this whole damn level if I have to, but this paddler’s gotta go. So I hop into the water.<\/p>\n Immediately, a few things become clear.<\/p>\n So if you ever play Battlespire<\/em>, a sincere pro tip:<\/p>\n what? <\/strong><\/p>\n no<\/strong><\/p>\n NEXT WEEK: RUNE PUZZLES AND THE BEGINNING OF THE END<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I’m sitting here, I’m wondering to myself–truly and sincerely–how much you care about anything in this next screenshot. So rather than get mired in the level’s specifics, let me break it down for you. We’ve got to find four hidden levers in this sprawling cavernous maze, as well as an as-yet-unidentified solution to an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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