PixelLinkr #129: The Story Behind the Puzzle
Spoilers ahead: for the puzzle and the movies/games
This post assumes you've already solved the puzzle. It reveals all categories and their connections, and discusses plot details, endings, and spoilers for featured movies/games throughout.
Neptune's Pride can run for weeks. This gives every alliance enough time to become sincere, useful, suspicious, and finally a story told with alarming bitterness.
🟢 Easy: Vehicles switch between travel and combat forms
Games: James Bond 007: Nightfire · Batman: Arkham Knight · Transformers: Devastation · SpyHunter
Bond's Aston Martin becomes a submarine in Nightfire. The Batmobile in Arkham Knight shifts between pursuit handling and a tank-like battle mode. Both vehicles treat an ordinary gearbox as a failure of imagination.
Transformers: Devastation makes robot-to-vehicle changes part of its attacks. The Interceptor in SpyHunter moves between car, boat, and emergency motorcycle configurations. Parking any of these must be miserable.
🟡 Medium: Playable siblings fight side by side
Games: Double Dragon: Neon · Children of Morta · Super Mario 3D World · Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Billy and Jimmy Lee have been punching through street gangs together since the arcade era. Double Dragon: Neon gives their partnership an aggressively fluorescent revival.
The Bergsons in Children of Morta turn a whole family into a roster. Mario and Luigi share both Nintendo platformers here, with extra heroes crowding the selection screen. Sibling cooperation survives as long as nobody mentions who missed the jump.
🔵 Hard: Light and shadow are puzzle tools
Games: Contrast · Aragami · SCHiM · Shadow Puppeteer
Contrast lets Dawn flatten herself onto projected shadows and run across them as platforms. Moving a light source can rebuild the route without changing the room.
Aragami treats darkness as fuel and transport. SCHiM makes cast shadows the only ground its creature can use. Shadow Puppeteer coordinates a boy in 3D with his shadow in 2D. A lamp is now level geometry. Please aim it responsibly.
🟣 Tricky: Multiplayer diplomacy rewards betrayal
Games: EVE Online · Neptune's Pride · Subterfuge · Solium Infernum
EVE Online has produced corporate thefts, espionage, collapsed alliances, and grudges large enough to require economic reporting. The ships have weapons. The organizational chart has more.
Subterfuge stretches secret negotiation across days. Solium Infernum formalizes infernal politics through demands and insults. The connection clicks when chat stops being a social layer and becomes the main system. Every promise is a move. Every apology is scouting.
The shadow games were elegant. The diplomacy games made turning off chat look like a wellness practice.
Today's CineLinkr puzzle has its own disastrous plans, although the amateur kidnappers negotiate even worse terms.