umdesch4

The forum for Antichamber, and all of it's threads seem to be gone. In my own post history, I see none of the posts I've made there in the last few days, but other game sub-thread posts...and attempting to get to anything Antichamber thread related results in 500 errors. Is this part of a bigger issue, or an isolated incident.

BTW, otherwise, I'm loving the site redesign so far...

Edit: Oh wait, they're back again, gone again, then back again. I assume this is some kind of intermittent thing. I'll just hang in there.

@thabigred: Did you get to the end?

Since this seems to be the thread for it, I'll bring it up here. I've seen mentioned in a couple places, related to the teleporters, that there's some way to "stop time". Does anyone know how to do this? Is it by exploiting some kind of bug, or a legit feature? Just curious, because it seems like the only thing left that I haven't seen in this game.

Yeah, I agree that this thing isn't for everyone, or at least that everyone might not feel they're getting their money's worth out of it. As a contrasting experience, I've played through this thing about 5 or 6 times, and spent a total time of maybe 3.5 hours with it. That's in the ballpark of a movie, and I'd end up spending more than $10 if I were to go see something in a theater. I consider that reasonable.

Having said that, yes I wish there were a lot more to this "game". I understand, from this poston the official Proteus forums, that there are potentially a few more additions coming, and calling them "updates" seems to imply that they won't be paid DLC. If/when that happens, I might play through a couple more times to see what's new, and check out this modding system.

Ok, so I got the dude. In fact, I've gotten him consistently now in two games, and once I made him reappear 4 times in a row. In case this helps, I did it by standing in the middle of the statues at night in autumn. If you stay there for a bit, a whole bunch of those white ball things will suddenly leap out of the ground all around you. If you then step outside the circle, the dude should appear right in the middle of it when the sky turns black again. You can chase him, and it seems like one of two things will happen: If he suddenly disappears in plain sight, then YOU will suddenly gain his ability to walk around leaving a glowing trail behind you. If you chase him far enough though, eventually he disappears into/around a tree, usually the largest tree on your island (or maybe that was just a coincidence with me).

So far, out of 6 plays, the things I've seen that are "rare" and seem random (ie. I can't get them to happen again):

1. Northern lights in the sky in winter, during the endgame. They're just a set of 3 or 4 huge overlapping semi-transparent, brightly colored pixel sheets in the sky, but they look really cool.

2. In spring, at night, a pair of "flying snakes" that kind of follow each other around in the sky. No wings and funky looking heads, and they just kind of slither around...weird.

3. In the summer, at night, a "collection" of those glowing balls, in a sphere that hovers just above the level of the trees. It just hangs there and makes a really cool sound. You can walk around under it and look at it from different angles, but it doesn't move or react to you at all.

4. A "ghost" thing. It's like a white, semi-transparent inverted triangle that hovers around the trunk of a tree. It looks like it might have a face, but hard to tell because it disappears when you get too close, and then promptly reappears when you move or look away.

Otherwise, everything I've seen has been something I've been able to find and/or cause in any given playthrough.

Another thing that seems completely random is the teleporters. I had one game where there was only one, and walking up to it did nothing. The next game, I had 3, and you could teleport from one to another, but it seemed to randomly coin-toss decide which one I ended up at.

...as you can tell, I'm really loving this game for some reason...

Edit: I suppose #4 above is probably the fox or wolf that others have mentioned. I did see it after chasing the "owl man" dude.

@EVO: Yes, there is an "ending" of sorts, or at least a point you can get to where the game forces an exit. As I mentioned above, it happens during the "winter" season.

I like experiences like Proteus that are open ended enough to be subject to interpretation. I have one such idea of what it's "about", and felt like sharing it.

The whole thing is a metaphor for life. You pass through seasons in it, like the so-called seasons of life. You're born at the beginning of spring, and die in winter. You get to do a lot of exploring and setting your own goals within those seasons, and every playthough, like every life, is different...but some of the key events and features of the landscape always occur.

Also, like life, if your goal is to always advance, you can finish it really quickly (I did one playthrough in under 15 minutes), but if you don't take the time to explore around, and go off the beaten path (literally in the game, and figuratively as in life), you'll miss some pretty cool stuff.

I'd love to read what other interpretations people are reading into this thing...

One thing I saw on my third play though was giant sheets of northern lights in the sky, as I was approaching the endgame. That was definitely different. I also liked seeing what happens in "autumn" when you stand in the middle of the statues at night. Still no sign of this dude from the screenshot posted earlier in this thread though...and I hung around the house/cottage often, in case he comes from there or something.

Anyone figured out a reliable way to find that guy yet?

@envane Yeah, I did that whole bit about walking through what I thought was a desert too. This "piece of interactive art" ('cuz I hesitate to call it a game) is really weird and cool.

@iAmJohn said:

@umdesch4: I'm really glad you posted that, because now I'm trying to comprehend how Deca Sports could've sold 2 million units.

Yeah, but I wonder when they say "shipped" (only some titles on the list say that). Does that mean they pressed and sent out that many copies, and now they're sitting out in the desert next to the old Atari ET cartridges?

@iAmJohn said:

but Epic Mickey is a game that sold a million and a half fucking units in its first month and Disney still called it a disappointment.

1.5 million sales on a Wii exclusive? Geez, that's pretty amazing. How much better could they possibly have expected it to sell? That's ridiculous. For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games