I’ve been putting some serious time in Curses! over the past few days, and am now at a point where I find myself trying rather tedious and probably useless strategies for moving forwards. I’m enjoying the game enough that I don’t want to check out a walkthrough, so instead, I’m going to ask for a little help here. Specifically, I would love to know which puzzles I should be trying to solve, and which ones I should be ignoring until I have made more progress elsewhere.
From this point, there will be massive spoilers for Curses!, so be warned.
First, an impression of where I am in the game:
I have 100 out of 550 points. I have solved the battery problem, ascended the roof, defeated the ghost and retrieved the gothic key. I have used the robot mouse and opened the door to the gardens. I have found the secret writing room and provided a suitable blanket for dreaming a ghostly dream. I have set off the fire alarm and taken the nuts from the bird.
Here are some of the problems I’m struggling with. Again, I’m not looking for solutions; what I want to know is whether I should try harder to solve each of these problems (because it’s already possible to do so), or leave them for later (because it’s not).
[spoiler]* I can go back to the time when the maze was planted, and I even know what to do there (use the weed killer so I open up the secret part of the maze). But I can’t for the life of me figure out how to leave this time – whatever I do, I’m arrested. (Well, I can escape using the book of poetry, but then the book is lost forever, which is probably not a good idea.) Can I solve the problem of returning to the present?
- Even more frustrating is a trip to the Berlin museum, where I can’t even get out of the first room – a metal barrier appears and I can’t interact with it. I’m wondering whether I need a ticket, but if so, I have no idea where to get it. Can I solve the problem of getting past the barrier?
- I have made several discoveries concerning Austin the cat, but I’m not profiting from them. You can push him around and scare him by jumping; and the devil tells me that Austin is always walking into walls when you don’t want him to. Since the devil always lies, this presumably means that Austin can usefully walk into a wall. That suggests jumping at Austin while there’s a projection on – but Austin never jumps into the projection. Can I do anything useful with Austin at this point?
- Sleeping in the bed in the secret room turns me into a ghost. But as a ghost, I can only descend into an octagonal tomb, where I can only interact with a wheel that I can turn once… to no avail. After that, I’m stuck. There’s a hieroglyph on the wall that obviously depicts the wheel, and has a few other symbols as well. Is this a puzzle I can solve, or do I have to wait, as some of the game text suggests, until I ‘understand hieroglyphics’?
- The devil suggests that it is useful to go back to the tarot parlour and cheat. You can put the cards you have on the pack, but all I’ve been able to find out is that you get a negative prediction just in case the Grim Reaper is on top and you’re a nobody if it isn’t. I’ve already tried 15 or so possible combinations, and this is boring… is there any use in trying to tackle this now?
- I need to get Evans’ mascot. It seems probable that I need to give him the contents of the jewellery box in return (it sports a rabbit’s foot), but it’s locked and apparently impervious to the lawn roller. Can I either open the box or get the mascot at this point in time?
[/spoiler]
That should be enough for now. Any help, even if it concerns only one of these problems, is much appreciated!