Part 28: Submachine 10: The Exit

Part 28
Submachine 10: The Exit


Welcome back! Last time we explored the entrance areas of Submachine 10: the Northern Garden Docks, the Captain's Ship and the Angel Ruins, where we found the Binary Portal which gives us access to many other areas.

The Angel Ruins, our current location, is at Binary Portal OOO.


Our first stop is portal IOO, the Royal Storage Facilities. We're on some pillar, and when we start climbing down, it turns out to be quite tall.

♫ Thumpmonks - Submachine 10 - Woozy


RTL
To the left, there's just another pillar.


Except, this one leads nowhere. Let's go further left.


Ah, one of the actual storage facilities.


The hatch further to the left is the entrance to Storage unit 32/1. But before we enter it, let's see what's left of here.

Meh, I'm sure it's nothing. Let's go on.


RTL
It's hard to depict in screenshots, but this place loops. Go further left from the pod and you find yourself on the right screen again. The only escape is going back to the right.


Similarly, the ladder down also loops between these two screens. At least you're never more than two steps away from a normal part of the world.


This is Storage unit 32/1. See the 'arms' on the bottom of the left screen? Those are good to recognize because they denote the exit. All of the Storage units have a gimmick: they 'loop'. Similarly to Submachine 3, you can keep going in any direction forever and you'll keep finding similar rooms.

But what's different is that every Storage unit only has a small number of unique rooms, so you'll quickly see old rooms again. Keep going in one direction and you'll find the exit again before you know it.


The room we ended up in has a Karma Fuse, and the one after that has another item lying on the ground.

There is a method to the madness in that every Storage unit has a specific way the rooms connect and loop. It can be figured out by a methodical walk through a Storage unit. If you do so and take your time, you can find each room easily. If not, you can get stuck here for hours getting incredibly annoyed because you're not finding the items you need.


We pick up the Vector Finder, and in the next unique room we find a machine on the wall.

In this first Storage unit, the way the rooms are connected are, as far as I can tell, completely random. Just pick any direction and keep going until you find all the rooms. In a way, this is the most annoying Storage unit, because if you don't know exactly what you need to find here, you may exit before finding all 5 rooms.


By the way, did anyone notice that Secret sitting next to the lamp over the right door?


The final room has a device that takes our Karma Fuse. Let's find the exit and get out of here for now.


To the right of the Binary Portal, we find the other, larger part of the Storage Facilities.


This is Storage Facility 33, and our first stop is down the non-looping ladder.


As storage unit 33/1 is hidden down here.


The gimmick here is rather simple. There are only three rooms, and regardless of the direction you pick, leaving room 1 takes you to room 2, leaving room 2 takes you to 3, and leaving 3 takes you back to 1.


The second room has a Loop Stabilizer hidden in it.


And the third has another Karma Fuse. Let's see if we can find the others, and then put them in the machine back in 32/1.


Up the ladder and to the right, we find Storage unit 33/2.


RTL
Another gimmick that's very simple to explain but can take surprisingly long to figure out. From the entrance, every exit leads to an unique room. From all other rooms, every exit leads to the entrance room. So, including the entrance, there are 5 rooms in total.


The thing on the wall to the left seems to be inactive. But our Loop Stabilizer fits into one of the slots. If you guessed we need to find three more, you're correct. Well done.


The room to the right of the entrance has another Karma Fuse, while the room to the bottom has nothing of interest.


On top we find a disabled Sub-Bot that seems to be in reasonable condition.

By the way, it took me a while to find everything in these annoying looping sections, and taking screenshots gets annoying too if you have no idea if you visited a room before or not. It might look like a smooth exploration in the LP, but believe me when I say it really isn't.


Outside and to the right, we find Storage unit 33/3.


Now this is where things get complicated. This unit has 9 unique rooms. That makes it incredibly easy to lose track of where you are. The room to the right of the entrance has a strange machine. It doesn't do anything yet.


Okay, so the simplest way to understand the gimmick of this place is to imagine a 5 by 5 room cross. The entrance is in the middle, and you can walk 2 screens in any direction without looping. This screen with the switch that doesn't work yet is to the right of the last screen we were in.

If I walk off the end of the cross, so I go further right here, I loop back to the entrance.


To the 'south' of the entrance, some more rusty devices that don't do anything yet.

When you step off the end of the cross, you appear at the entrance. However, when you step off the side of one of the cross arms, you appear in the room that is directly connected to the entrance on that side. For instance, if I go to the right here, while I'm in the downward arm, I end up in the room with the large machine to the right of the entrance.


RTL
To the left from the entrance, we find a device with a knob that actually does work, and a Note next to the dead Sub-Bot.

THERE IS A WAY OUT!

...The Lighthouse, huh? Why couldn't we escape from there when we were there back in Submachine 2?


Anyway, we leave the knob in the single-dot position and go up from the entrance. Now the wall switch marked with a single dot has a green light, meaning we can flip it.


The top room has nothing of use. Anyway, did my explanation of the gimmick sound complicated? Believe me, if you don't know it or don't have a map, it's easy to get lost here. All rooms look alike and you also have to keep track of that switch puzzle.


The good news is that flipping that last switch turned a light green in the bottom room.


We turn the knob into the two position and flip the two-dotted switch.


And once more with feeling for the third switch.


My feeling at this point was "let's get the prize and let's get the hell out", but the machine still isn't activated.


We first have to return the knob to point down, and then the device opens.


We grab the 2nd Loop Stabilizer from it and get out.


Outside, on top of the ladder, we find the final Storage unit we can access, 33/4.


RTL
This unit has the most devious layout yet. Like the last one, it has 9 unique rooms, and like the last one, there's a stable path you can take to get to every room. However, if you step off the path you appear right back at the entrance. The room to the left of the entrance has nothing of interest.


RTL
There are two more 'stable' rooms to the left of that. One of them has another Karma Fuse.

Because things weren't complex enough yet, going up from the entrance takes you to the same room as when you go left from the entrance (the one we just saw, with the big microphone), and going down from the entrance takes you to the same room as going right. So, from the entrance you can really only reach two rooms directly.


These are the two rooms just to the right of the entrance. The wall device doesn't do anything yet.

From the entrance, you can go three rooms left and three rooms right. That makes up a total of 7 rooms.



In the room to the far right, we pick up a Picture with a symbol on it. The room also has the Long Stick, which we'll need later.

So where are the two final rooms? Yeah, those are the real problem here.


This one is found by, starting from the entrance, going left exactly twice, then going up. We flip the switch right away.


This other one is found by, starting from the entrance, going right exactly twice, then going down. The problem with these is that they're the only rooms in any of the Storage units that cannot be found by just going straight into every direction from the entrance. If you don't know the layout, you'll need to try every single direction from every single room to find them. That can take a while. And it would be easy to overthink it and assume you need to do some complicated back-and-forth sequence to find the rooms at all.

In any case, as you can see in the right picture, flipping both switches turns the lights on this wall device (right of the entrance) green.


We grab another Loop Stabilizer and get the hell out of here.


To the right of the Storage Facility, we find another temporal anomaly warning. Let's take a look at the place anyway, for completion's sake.


Just two repeating screens, with nothing in them. But, we found enough items to solve a few puzzles, so let's go do that.


We found three more Karma Fuses, so we'll put those into the device in 32/1, the Storage unit to the far left. We can now flip the switch in the middle.


This opens up a little hatch in another room, where we find the final Loop Stabilizer.


The three Loop Stabilizers complete and activate the device in 33/2.


Which actually opens up a Karma Portal.

I happen to know that right now there's nothing we can do in the place beyond that Karma Portal. And it's also a place where I really don't like to go, so let's postpone that and go elsewhere first.


Next time, when we'll start by exploring the region of Binary Portal OIO.