Let’s recap the chapters so far – Chapter one was a lovely introduction to Puzzle Island, with some military grade foreboding; topping it off with the trophy Denial and the superstorm got us thinking this whole game might be about someone’s death.

Chapter 2 and the Skeleton flesh bird from hell almost made it our death, but we got past them and completed the stage of Anger. The fact Chapter 3 starts as Bargaining tells me we’re either dealing with someone’s step by step plan of car sales, or it is indeed the five stages of grief. With that in mind, let’s jump in. 

At least the opening scene is more promising than the last. Instead of being surrounded by dementors staring ominously at us, we’re in a lovely little forest temple room. The lovely lasts all of five minutes because it turns out this room was designed by Jim Henson and based off M.C Escher’s Relativity; I swear if David Bowie shows up, I wouldn’t be all that surprised. Just concerned. As with all things RiME, escaping that first room means absolutely nothing. When we do make it out, we’re in a long hallway, and whether it’s just the curse of RiME or it’s our luck, the hallway decides that it doesn’t believe in normal spatial laws of physics and it just GOES ON. If we’re still expecting people to show up, this is the time when Dark Sun Gwyndolin would rock up and fire a barrage of magic at us. I’m reeeaally hoping that is not how RiME plays out. After several minutes of running down the hallway, it is apparent that if it’s an endurance test, the hallway is going to beat me. Turns out though, this game wants us to be a quitter! By doubling back, we’ve somehow done exactly what it wanted and now instead of seeing just how far we’ve come, we’re greeted with the way into the next room.  For shits and giggles I turned around to see what the real hallway looked like, and it turns out instead of an endless corridor, there’s a collectible to find! 

I was also musing whilst in the long corridor that as painful as an endless run down a hallway forever would be, at least it wasn’t as dark and dingy as some of the places our previous adventures had taken us to. I also then thought I shouldn’t ever voice things out loud, because the next room was dingy and miserable, and this time we’re greeted with more Shadow people blocking the only way through. I hate to enact swift and painful deaths on anyone, but our only way out of here is by turning a tower in the room which reflects sunlight straight at these guys. A few shadowy screams later, and we can move on! This next room has more of those “Last days of Pompeii” statues from the previous chapters. Once again, we brush the statues and the shadowy dementor people that were trapped inside are freed from their stony prisons. The difference this time is that last time they were afraid of us. Now though, they live up to their nickname of Dementor that Sakage gave them both in ability and in looks; they start literally sucking the life and colour out of us. I don’t mean in the fun Nancy Reagan Throat Goat way either. It’s time to run, kid! 

Things start to look like they won’t improve, with there being an increasing number of the Shadow Dementors, and more rooms filled with water to swim through until suddenly, the greatest development yet; THE FOX IS BACK! Chasing the fox leads us into a well lit room with a large mural on the ground of a boy and an orb. I know I should pay attention, but literally all I care about is that the fox is back. It’s likely this mural will point me in the direction of some way to stay alive in the coming challenges, and I DO like being alive, but the fox barks and this holds my attention way more than something insignificant like staying alive. (Sorry Bee Gees).

At last we find the Orb™ and it is basically one of the big orbs from the previous areas, that if shouted at emitted a pulse, but we can carry this one around. We take it forwards, following our foxy friend, and with a yell the orb explodes and a switch is activated. 

Score one for the boys at R&D for actually managing to improve a design!

That isn’t all the orb can do! We can place it on pedestals and that then opens mystical doorways. This is a way more exciting development when you haven’t gone through the fun mystical doorway. It seems this game is cursed that every fun thing is followed by something dark and gritty, just to make sure we are aware of the ever present theme of Death. This new room can only be described as some sort of machine graveyard, which aside from a great name for a rock band or a dark Portal 2 DLC,  is really quite depressing. Discarded husks of two legged automatons, with a large orb sitting above the legs litter the room. We can shout at the orb which causes it to explode and momentarily powers the dead robots, but it only gives them enough juice to move their legs out of our way. OR MAYBE NOT. With a loud crash and an even louder Roar(?) one of the figures stands tall above us and suddenly we have a companion. As with all things RiME i become somewhat emotionally attached to our spindly legged, ball headed friend, which means after opening a door for us, he straight up dies. It’s a truly hollywood-esque death, complete with staggering falls, and it seems to affect our boy too. With his dying…whatever it is the Orb has, he manages to impart on us some visions that maybe we won’t be so alone in future. Now we just need some cathartic and healthy way to work through our anguish at losing our Ball based friend. I motion that we head into a dark room, get chased around by some more sucky suckies (how wonderful we can demean our enemies all whilst they try to kill us) until we finally scream at an orb releasing light that wipes them out. Oh? That’s exactly what the next room is? Perfect. I know this game is going through the 5 stages of grief, but I really hope it’s not also some sort of allegory regarding society or something because it is DARK and I love it. It also worries me how much satisfaction I get from wiping these guys out with extreme prejudice now they can fight back, especially knowing how easily they could have destroyed me in previous chapters and never did. Oh well, I’ll confront those moral and ethical demons another time. (Let’s also gloss over how it still did not take me long at all to play 10 pin shadow bowling.) 

Luckily, the next room we reach has sunlight, and our terrifying shadow friends can’t reach us. Also, the Fox is back! He playfully runs away, but I am inclined to follow since (1) He always seems to lead us to an interesting development and (2) He’s a fox. I’m not wrong either. We reach a large room that has several exits, and a lift that we activate by, you guessed it, shouting at, but whose doors only shut for a second before immediately opening again. It seems less like the lift moves and more that everything outside the lift does. We can also see that they finally let the guy who helped design previous mechanics after rewatching Disney’s Atlantis back in; There’s a tree with a bunch of lines running up it that I am going to call it now, will light up when we do something with it. Unfortunately for us, it’s surrounded by our shadowy adversaries, so we must find a way to humanely get them to leave. What’s that? The Tree room has a skylight we can open from a safe distance that immediately burns all that stand in our way until they’re flakes of ash drifting by? Say no more.

Using the Lift-that-isn’t-a-lift we gain access to the upstairs section of the room, and it contains one of my favourite puzzles RiME will continue to offer us. The doors are locked due to their being a constant source of light on them, and will only unlock when their keystones are shrouded in darkness; in the middle of the room, the miniature sun is sitting on a platform that does seem to have a random protrusion that does a great job of blocking said light. To rotate the platform we just need to get the attention of the inquisitive idol sitting below, on whose head the whole mechanism literally sits. I say inquisitive, because every time you shout he spins around to follow what you’re doing, thus bringing shadow to where you want it. I just love when puzzles are solved by randomly shouting at creatures.

Alas, the door is opened and we get to open the skylight, flooding the Tree Room and all it’s inhabitants in light. At some point, I will begin to question my morals and the ethics of all I’m doing. After all, it’s the age old question of any game whereby entering a location provokes the inhabitants to attack you on sight; They were here first. Unless I am actively trying to play as a villain, what gives me the right to kill and maim and burn my way through hordes of Draugr, Dark Wizards, Goblins, Shadow people, Animals…The list is depressingly long.

Hold on. Am I a Bad person?!

With that particular moral quandary in mind, We make our way into the Tree room. Being such a perfect idyllic room, it’s seems the perfect time to take stock of Who I am, and whether I’m the real antagonist or not. Perhaps I deserved Puzzle Island after all. The question is though, did Puzzle Island deserve me?

More to come in Part 3 – The second half!

-Brightstarfox.