The Fates of Twinion: Lines and Squares

 

What would happen if I "accidentally" clicked "on-line"?

       

I had an oddly enjoyable experience with Twinion during the holiday break, one that had little to do with the game itself. I played it in a couple of long sessions with a crackling fire nearby, a snow-covered landscape out the window, surrounded by holiday cheer and too much food, audiobooks or films in the background. I spent about half of each day doing things with Irene, including playing Frosthaven (which I'm starting to believe will never actually end) and scanning half a lifetime of photographs. Otherwise, Irene did Sudoku and crocheted, and I did crossword puzzles and filled in the squares on half a dozen 16 x 16 Twinion maps. A more complex, immersive game would have taken over the experience and disrupted the delicate balance.

         

I spent most of the first half untangling filling in parts of the three levels that I blogged about last time: Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress," Level 4: "a-MAZE-ing," Level 4: "The Armory," Level 5: "The Enclave," and Level 6: "Twinion Keep." When I ended the previous session, I was on the cusp of a few discoveries that simply required me to go in slightly different directions from the ones I had previously chosen. To wit:

    

• I retraced my steps through the invisible one-way wall area of "The Enclave," went a different direction than before, and found one of the map pieces that Queen Aeowyn asked me to find. Specifically, I found two men fighting over the map piece and managed to snatch it just as they fell into the lava. (I was just reading how despite the many film depictions of lava that show otherwise, a person would not actually fall into lava so much as on top of it, sinking no more than a couple of inches while catching fire and burning to death. I demand a new, traumatizing ending to The Lord of the Rings.)

       

The area that a later NPC calls "pandemonium."

      

• After an encounter in an unexplored region of "Night Elf Ingress," I found a set of Pipes of Enchantment. This powerful artifact turns some of an enemy party to my side. I don't know how many charges it has, but I've been using it sparingly. 

       

It's nice to make enemies attack themselves.

      

• A room behind a secret door on the same level gave me a M.A.Z.E. Key (despite the periods, I suspect it doesn't stand for anything). This key opened a door I hadn't been able to access on "a-MAZE-ing," where I found a second map piece. The M.A.Z.E. Key and the Stone of Awareness both disappeared at this point, having fulfilled their duties. I can't give Fates of Twinion much, but I'd love to see more games in which quest items automatically disappear when they've satisfied all useful purpose.

• The door that I was not strong enough to open in "The Armory" yielded when my strength exceeded 20. It led to a series of rooms, most of which I couldn't open. The one that I could open held a set of armor specifically for rangers. I gather that the other rooms would have opened to other classes and held armor specific to them. I'm getting the sense that a lot of locations are class-specific, accounting for some of the dead spaces on my maps. It's all the more shame that the authors didn't let a single player create a party.

         

The one door that I could open.

       

Combat ceased to be much of a concern after the last entry. I continued to experiment with a few tactics, but when you find multiple Potions of Heal All in your post-combat loot, plus you make enough money to be able to afford those potions topside, combat strategy becomes easy: Fight until you're down to a couple of hundred hit points, then get a dose of that potion. Most enemies didn't cause me to have to use the potion during combat, although vampire sorceresses, golems, and sleeths ("sleethes"?) remained rather dangerous.

   

Mostly due to experience bonuses from finding the map pieces, I made it to Level 19 by this point. I started to hit caps in my attributes and skills. The game wouldn't let me advance "Agility" past 8 nor any of my skills past 12. After one more level, unless I learn a new skill, I won't have anywhere to put my skill points.

     

Even my spells are nearing their maximum.

      

(Related question: What is the point of putting any points into the "Teleport" spell? It does one thing: teleport you out of the dungeon.) 

       

At this point, despite some existing holes in almost all the Level 4-6 maps, I couldn't find any place to go except a new map: Level 7: "Tipekans," which is of course "Snakepit" backwards. On my initial visit to the area, I could only explore its edges; the center of the map was walled off. A message noted that this was the clever work of the brothers Sneer, Smug, and Smirk.

    

Yes, they built walls. Diabolical.

      

Old enemies included golems and grey oozes. New ones were Marillian swindlers, Faenian sorcerers, guardian medusas, winged pythons, pincer pythons, enchantresses of Casille, and murderous thieves. (Again, no word on where any of these locations are.) Enchantresses of Casille had a lot of hit points but otherwise weren't dangerous. Only the murderous thieves posed any real challenge. I died the first round that I faced them and had to come back. Packs of them could easily wipe out my hit points in a single round. I mostly defeated them by using the Pipes of Enchantment to convert some of their members.

      

Encounters:

   

• Someone took my Tnepres Key and gave me a Welcome Scroll.

• A gremlin cleric exchanged my Emerald Lockpick for a Diamond Lockpick. (A note later suggested that without the Emerald Lockpick, visiting this map was pointless.)

• Behind a door opened with the Diamond Lockpick, someone exchanged it for a Sapphire Lockpick.

• A dwarf knight was searching for a temple to heal his wound. 

       

I've already been there.

       

• An exasperated halfling mentioned an area called "The Races" in which only certain races could open certain doors. I thought she was talking about the area I already mentioned at first, but later I learned otherwise.

• Behind a secret door, a sleeping thief woke up, picked my pocket, and fled. At first, I thought he just stole gold. Soon, I realized he stole my Sapphire Lockpick. Goddamn it.

   

Fortunately, I annotated where I got everything and did the loop again. This time, knowing that the Diamond Lockpick would be shortly replaced by the Sapphire Lockpick, I took a break in between to test the Diamond Lockpick in the safe on Level 5: "The Enclave." It worked. I got 100,000 gold pieces and three artifact items: a Staff of Justice, a bow called Crescent Moon, and Nero's Lyre. I ended up selling the staff. Crescent Moon seemed to do more damage than my existing bow, so I swapped it out. The Lyre apparently cast's "Fireball." After this detour, I returned to "Tipekans" and finished the circuit without visiting the thief this time.

     

"Somehow found their way into  your pocket?!" I earned those gold pieces.

       

All this key and lockpick-swapping made me realize I had some locked doors on Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress" that I hadn't tried in a while. One, near the entrance, opened with the Front Door Key. It took me to a fountain that taught me the "True Seeing" spell. It reveals hidden doors. This is particularly useful because I've been relying largely on my Ring of Thieves for that, which runs out of charges after about 10 uses. (It recharges when you leave the dungeon and return.) 

   

Other doors still wouldn't open, so I was stuck again. I hadn't checked all the walls of "Tipkekans" for secret doors, so I returned to do so. It's worth noting a few things about secret doors:

      

• The game often clues you to their presence with a vague note about "strange markings" on the wall or "construction" recently having been done in the area. Sometimes it only does this on your second visit to the wall.

• Some secret doors you have to detect with a spell or item that casts the spell. Others you cannot detect and must simply bash through.  

      

A typical hidden door message. This one didn't show the door after I discovered it.

      

• It's about 50/50 whether the game actually shows a door after you find a door.

• Your discovery of the door is extremely temporary. Your next action must be to walk through the door, or else the game will forget that you found it. If it's a locked door, your discovery must then immediately proceed to use of the correct key or pick, then immediately travel through the door, or else the game will forget that the door is both discovered and unlocked. 

      

This time, the Sapphire Lockpick revealed a door I had missed before. I followed a series of teleporters, picking away at the edges of the level, until it brought me to an unmapped area of Level 4: "Night Elf Ingress." Along the way, a bunch of signs indicated that I was headed for the "ballroom." At one point, some thieves waylaid me, tied me up, and stole the Sapphire Lockpick again. I was able to keep the rope when they untied me.

      

I think I have an idea where I could use this.

      

The "Key of C" opened the door to the so-called ballroom, which was just a 2 x 2 room. There, one fountain poisoned me and another taught me the "Bard" skill.

   

Yet another teleporter took me to a new map on Level 6: "Rat Race." I didn't get very far in the level, which featured false doors (or else I was the wrong race), damaging waters, and one-way walls. I ran into one NPC who said that she'd just found her fourth map piece and needed to find the way out. Ominously, the game mentioned that she had a Skeleton Key. A few steps later was another NPC: "Some doors here are to deceive, not to open. By the way, you did bring your reforged Skeleton Key with you, didn't you?"

      

Would rage GIFs be a good addition to my blog?

       

I soon learned that I was in a dead-end area of the level. I'd missed a secret door somewhere. 

    

Pop.

      

That was the bursting of the little warm bubble that the game had managed to build up. Now, in addition to obtaining the Skeleton Key again, I would have to re-obtain the Emerald Key, then re-exchange it for the Diamond and Sapphire Keys, then work my way all the way back to the level again.

   

When I got back to the outside, I hit Level 20, and the game asked me to make the choice depicted at the top of this entry, and for a delightful two seconds, I misunderstood and thought that the game wasn't going to continue to let me play unless I joined the online version.  

   

I finished the session by returning to an area of "Night Elf Ingress" that ended at some lava. The rope I got from the thieves swung me over. On the other side, I found a fountain that taught me the "Fencing" skill but nothing else.

   

My progress on Levels 4-7 so far.

         

While I was wrapping up this entry, commenter JoshNotCharles commented on an old entry called "Breadth, Depth, and Immersion." I remember writing that entry and feeling that the thesis needed a bit of refinement, but rereading it today, I think it holds up fairly well. Moreover, it gets at the heart of what's wrong with The Fates of Twinion that isn't wrong with, say, Wizardry. Twinion offers too much breadth—
too large a physical space—without enough depth or immersion. It's a line rather than a cube. 

    

The online version of Twinion must have at least been a square. Multiplayer interaction and the increase in combat tactics would have created greater depth. By making no adjustments when adapting the game to its offline mode (such as allowing party creation), the developers ensured that the solo player would face a far less interesting game. I suspect they didn't care; I think the screenshot at the beginning of this entry demonstrates that the developers always intended offline mode as an appetizer for the more lucrative online mode. 

    

I'll probably press on to the end of the map quest and then call it a day.

   

Time so far: 36 hours