The Let's Play Archive

The Submachine Series

by Carbon dioxide

Part 25: Submachine 9: The Temple

Part 25
Submachine 9: The Temple



Time for the next part of the Temple. Last time, we found Murtaugh's long-dead body and took his Golden Seal.

Thumpmonks - Submachine 9 - Temple


The Golden Seal goes on this device, which, if you remember, was next to the stairs down into the Temple. Looks like we need another.


The first course of action, now that we got another Karmic Seal, is to finish this puzzle up in the Pyramid.


With both Karmic Seals in place, in another Layer this lid opens, giving us access to the Brass Valve.


Right next to it was this Karma lever we made appear last time. Let's switch it.


We could've done this right after we found the Bowl that made the lever appear down here, but I wanted to show what it actually does. Something changed down in the pipe.


The part with the dead-end pipe going down is now flipped, as indicated by the T on the lever.


Up here we find the third Secret sitting on the ground.


To progress, we use the Brass Key we found while exploring Murtaugh's Tomb on the locked gate to the far right of the Temple. Even though this game has a rather complicated map and a lot of backtracking, progression can only happen in the order Mateusz wants you to learn about the story.


More dark caverns.


This looks suspiciously like the other side of the Temple. Let's see if we can make out the ancient lettering...


Nope. No. I won't believe this. It can't be true.

quote:

- Why does this sociopath talk only to Elizabeth?

- She's the only person he can see. Remember, we're one-dimensional. We're like a drawing on a piece of paper to him. A drawing that was erased, redrawn and erased again. Seven times over.
To the right of the tomb, another, more comprehensive answer to this old question. I can only wonder how he saw us, the player character, during the time we had contact with him.


Another cow statue, but this one has a switch. We'll push it right away and continue exploring this Tomb.


RTL
Through the arch with Elizabeth's name on it, we find a device on which we can finally use our Brass Sphere. We've been carrying that thing around for two updates, we found it on the first floor of the Pyramid.


This opens up a Karma Portal which takes us to a part of the Pyramid we haven't been to yet - the top (4th) floor which is just two screens wide. It's blue, like the 3rd.


Nothing in the 'air vent'.


But to the right we get the Climbing Rope.


Nothing in this 'air vent' either so let's quickly go back to the Tomb.


To the right is this statue. The game doesn't give any indication to what it is. Could it be Liz, doing science?

I guess I can't delay it any longer - let's go look at the sarcophagus.



ELIZABETH, THE MERCIFUL

THE HEALER, THE MOTHER


I really love the symmetry that's going on here. Let's open it.... crap I never got the second Stone Eye, did I? Time to backtrack, again.


First of all, the switch on the cow statue near Elizabeth's Tomb opens up a hatch in Murtaugh's cow statue, with the fourth Secret.


Remember this device with the rope we saw on the bottom level of the Pyramid? Yeah, the Lever Handle we found one floor higher fits on here. I could've done this a while ago but I completely forgot about this puzzle when I first passed it.


Once we release the rope, some weight pulls it up through the vent. This makes a rope drop in the other room with the same Eye of Horus symbol on the wall, which is one floor up, on floor -2.


Climbing up, we find ourselves in the last unexplored part of the Pyramid, the very right side of the first basement floor. Only took three updates to fully explore this place.


And in the left room, we grab the second Stone Eye from the ...statue? That looks like it has a metal claw? I actually never noticed that before, both Stone Eye statues kinda look like partially-melted robots.


Click for large
In case you want to see what the entire Pyramid looks like, here it is.


We can now open the coffin in Elizabeth's Tomb.


And the second Golden Seal is ours.


We use it to activate the machine near the middle.


Which moves the statue to the left, revealing a ladder further into the depths.


It's quite deep. Assuming there's no weird Submachine shenanigans going on, we're quite a ways below the surface now.


We end up in what appears to be another large cavern. Before we find out what this new place is about, let's first get the final Secret.


It's hard to see but we can go left from the place we ended up in, and there's a tile on the roof that points out there's something on the floor in Layer 5.


We bring the Brass Scale up here to this device in the Pyramid.


We can tip it one way or the other. Tipping it to the right gives us access to the hole in Liz's Tomb.


Which is blocked off by sand. We can't do anything here yet.


Tipping it to the left opens up the hole just to the left of Elizabeth's Tomb. This puzzle is for finding a Secret so of course there's nothing in the game explaining this, you'll have to find it by yourself.


In this hole we can push a rod into the wall.




We run all the way back up, tip the scale the other way to close the left hole and re-open the right one. Pushing the rod made a thing fall out of the wall here, together with the last Secret.


Now that we got all Secrets we can approach the end-game of Submachine 9.


We use the Brass Valve to remove the only thing keeping us from falling into the depths.


And, because it seems to be a long way down, this is a good place to use our Climbing Rope.

I'm going to end this update here, even though it isn't that long yet. We've still got quite a bit to go. Next time, we'll find out what's down there, and we'll see if the reward for collecting all Secrets can shed some light on the mysteries so far.