#submachine

[penny-anna]

entering something and never exiting

[remked]

Hailing from the Flash era of games.

I encourage you to play this one.

You won't regret it!

[svbmachine]

I&'ve been replaying Submachine Universe by the way, the game that initially made me& realize that wait, this is really good actually. I& was planning to go through all the theories in the game and see if any of them held up at all now that I& have a better understanding of the lore, although even then back when I& first played the game and have only finished games up to S4, I& still could tell that half of these were straight up fanfiction with a hefty load of pseudo-scientific bullcrap.

My& replay resurfaced those memories proving that impression to be mostly true, but just as before, Jatsko's wonderful and in-character contributions stood out. The Light Theory might be one of if not THE favourite one of mine& in the entire game. The dialogue just has a ton of personality to it, and all of the "oh boy, you have no idea" moments are delightful. Probably the moment I& have the most memories of from the entire game. The Subnet Editing Theory is another example of an absolutely brilliant moment that I& gushed about a lot during my& liveblog to my& friends - it's very clever and neat how the theory itself gets edited, making you suspect that maybe it really is true.

I& haven't finished the game yet, as it's far less straightforward than the other games are. I& have pretty much memorized Shattered Quadrant by now, but the real challenge of Universe has nothing to do with item collecting and everything to do with decyphering location numbers. This very different gameplay loop from the other games always made me& truly feel like an actual researcher trying to estimate safe spots for jumping. I& think this game is the most resistant one of them all to memorization, because you cannot memorize hundreds of 3-digit numbers unless you're some prodigy. All of the note-keeping is another big part of the fun. So satisfying to look at your giant notepad in your inventory after finishing exploring the main parts and just seeing how many places you've visited.

The fanart you see is also absolutely delightful <3 The favourite section of them all for me& has got to be the maps room, because even if they aren't all that legible for an actual walkthrough, artistically speaking these maps are exactly how I& imagine the Subnet in my& head and show really well the proximity of each space to another. They're gorgeous, very fun to examine. Including two of these that I& screenshotted for context.

But, of course, the theories.... The main star of the game.... None really provided any super clever insight into the game's actual real lore. Granted, most of these are very old and didn’t have the foresight and knowledge of future lore additions we would get, but. Some of these are especially funny to me&. Here's a few shout outs:

Tim Roth.

I& couldn’t stop laughing at this whole theory like YOU JUST MADE UP AN OC THERE. TIM ROTH???? The incredible assumption that a scientist from modern day would have the most American name you can think of, and the whole attempt at explaining ancient Egyptian theme in the game with downright conspiracy-reminiscent fanfiction is great. I& found this so funny that I& named the whole location after Tim Roth, my& new favourite Submachine character.

Submurchine Theory:

A+ goated theory purely for the pun. That's it guys, we've solved Submachine. Sorry I& mean Submurchine.

Ok this next one had me& in actual tears because:

PAYPAL ME& ONE ANCIENT RUSTING COIN.

Me& and my& friend cannot stop making jokes about that "Paypal me one ancient rusting coin" tumblr shitpost, so when I& reached that sentence I& SCREAAAAMEDDDDD. HIS SAVINGS.... OF ONE COIN...... THAT'S HIS LIFE SAVINGS GUYS. We solved why the coin is there it's Murtaugh's hidden stash that he's withholding from his scientists THIS IS JUST SO FUCKING FUNNY YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP.

There were some other funny or downright wrong moments in the theories such as people saying the bullet holes are from Murtaugh trying to kill us (??? IT'S LITERALLY ELIZABETH'S SHIP IT'S HER GUNS... she tried to kill Mur what are you even on), people getting the very concept of the 4th dimension downright wrong (and I&'m not even talking about the "is it space or is it time" debacle, I& mean implying that 4th dimension was... a... a klein bottle esque surface?? Itself?? Like the whole dimension??), implying colonialism is most obvious motivation, sanism, and whatever... this fanfiction is. I& don't understand what in the world is going on here.

All of this is lighthearted joking, I& think for what the people had to work with back in the day these are all pretty okay as theories. It was interesting to me& how I& instantly accepted that yeah, this is just a world that works differently to ours, and the questions that interested me& were all related to the actual narrative presented in the game - which order the events happened in, things like that. But a lot of other people seem to be far more interested in figuring out the backstory of things, the technology itself, and its connections to the real world.

To be entirely fair to these people, we didn't know until very recently that the events of the games are supposed to be happening entirely outside of our regular Earth and layer that we're used to. That Kent is apparently not even the real life British place of Kent, but its own made-up location. It goes against what one's intuition would say, and it's frankly kind of a retcon considering that not all of the lore of the games was written with that implication in mind. I& think initially, these theories would have been pretty reasonable for what we knew. The real world imagery excites the imagination and encourages one to draw the logical connections.

I& have a lot more thoughts on this game, the lore featured in it, the mechanics of the puzzles and more. Maybe I&'ll make other posts on this topic later, but these were the things I& wanted to talk about from my& yesterday's replay.

[videogamepolls]

Requested by @itstheclaud

[xivu-arath]

submachine legacy comes out today (october 13, 2023)! in one hour at the time of writing this post, actually

if you're interested in:

point and click games with detailed and elaborate environments

a story you have to piece together slowly amidst fragments and unreliable narrators

exploring a superstructure that doesn't care about you, nor the explorers that came before you

the atmosphere of being alone with the void

reliving a very specific childhood of growing up playing flash games

then I highly recommend getting or wishlisting it! submachine is a series by mateusz skutnik, and was originally released, piece by piece, for free as flash games since 2005. legacy is a remaster of every submachine game, put together and polished up. I've been playing these games and following the series since I was twelve, and I'm so glad to have the entire series made accessible again after the death of flash

I'd have still recommended the original series in a heartbeat, and I am recommending legacy even faster

[ilikeispy]

“[...] Well, I did lose my left arm, but what the hell, [...]”

— Murtaugh, about losing his arm.

[virenr]

Winter palace

[ahno-nimus]

THE PROJECT IS sorta COMPLETE!

(Wooo! Yeah!)

My game, Triskelion: The Interface Incident is (more-or-less) complete! It's not the prettiest, and it's not very long (because IDK how to do saves) But it has mysteries! And a neat aesthetic! and a spooky shadow thing!

[drzewobojczyni]

World Watercolor Month day 10: Buried

This is the day I started falling behind previously, but this year I'm on time!

I think the lighthouse from Submachine is a great topic for today's prompt, don't you think?

DeviantArt

[captainpissofff]

Liz: So... Did you ever catch me after all?...

Murtaugh: You know there are seven answers to that question, my dear Liz.

[the-uncanny-dag]

Not now, babe, I just found another Mateusz Skutnik flash game

[penny-anna]

Submachine: Legacy + @screenshotsofdespair part 2 (part 1)

(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10)

[who-do-i-know-this-man-s4]

⚠️Vote for whomever YOU DO NOT KNOW⚠️‼️

[svbmachine]

Gifs for when I&'m gripping my& head in agony and thinking about how good Submachine is

[xivu-arath]

I'd like to eventually make a proper themes post about submachine. idk if I'll get anywhere conclusively, but something about exploration and the journey, even when the destination has been set and the path has been made already. the enshrinement of memory, and what that means for the structures you're traversing and the sentience behind them. the levels of isolation and yet connection. is this an escape or a pilgrimage or a discovery?

even how you move through the game repeatedly - down and then up, and then through light... the use of facades and backgrounds and light to make game locations into diegetic setpieces. the structures are the game, the games become the structure, and the structure is... huge, and empty, and uncaring, but it listens and it watches, and also drives you insane for some reason

probably some character analysis too if I can pull myself away from my murtaugh apologism

just!! this series. something about it is always so close when I play through it that it's hard to stop talking about it

[lonely-shine]

Okay, so. I have a very stupid dilemma and I'm about to annoy you all with it because I can.

So, lately I've been thinking of turning Ebis and Marcus, my Submachine OCs, into wholly original characters. That is, divorcing them from the fandom and giving them their own original story/universe. Sounds good enough, right?

Okay, problem: I really love the journey that I already wrote for Ebis and Marcus for the fanfic and would like to preserve it as is as much as possible, which I don't know if I can do without basically plagiarizing Submachine.

Like, I do need to have a bunch of scientists exploring a weird ass, dangerous place that has a lot of weird space-time shenanigans about it. Which means I could simply turn this into a space exploration story and immediately draw some distance from Submachine with the setting... Except I very much do not want to write a space exploration story for these characters.

Nothing wrong about space exploration, but what I'm craving for this is something way more obscure and weird. And I kinda need it to be about a world that is not really (just) a world but (also) a creature. (Oh, the fun I could have with this, I'm telling you).

Thing is, I'm worried about this being/turning too similar to Submachine. Like, the reason I want to (potentially) do this is because I want to do something different and explore stuff in my own way, but I am very aware that Submachine is currently my main source of inspiration, so yeah.

(also, to be completely clear, if I ended up doing this I would probably have, at most, a bunch of character sheets and a few disconnected scenes that I might share publicly, not anything full-fledged that I'd properly publish/commercialize (that requires more energy and focus than I currently have), so I'm not even sure if me stressing so much about this is even necessary, but welp. I'd rather be safe than sorry)

But anyway, let me know your thoughts about this if you have any. Also, I might add more info about the ideas slowly rotating inside my head like they're microwaving there in the reblogs if you're looking for that. (I will definitely add that info because the thoughts kept rotating in the time it took for me to draft this post lmao)