Impossible puzzles... (SPOILERS)

[Bitcoin Baron]

Hello there I am on second playthrough through this game, and more puzzles make more sense now (after cheatings through the first time) but theres currently two things that are REALLY REALLY bothering me, dont read below if you havent completed the game:

BALDRICKS

In the hardbour level, to restore the morris dancer's projector, you have to ORDER baldricks with the order form, but thats not what you get, you get some bells. Feel free to do a goodle image search on "morris dancer baldricks" to find out what they are (trouser braces that cross in the middle). Why is this?

And is there specifically anything IN GAME that should direct you to write "baldricks" on the order form in the first place? I have found nothing.

BRIMCLIF MINE
This is the second bugbear on my list, down in the lower mine. Mining depth 300 and across the rope bridge you have the pipe puzzle. Obviously I put the pipe handle back on the one where its missing, but can someone explain to me for the love of god how you are supposed to work out how to solve this puzzle? There seems absolutely no sense to it.

An especially frustrating aspect is that on one attempt you can pull down a set of pipes. And next attempt you cant try to pull those same pipes down, in the same order and it will fail. Unless theres something in game that explains this, this puzzle is actually impossible (on the basis that theres no way to figure out what is going on).

[gusgreco7]

it's my first playthrough and i am struggling to understand the game mechanics, the puzzles also seem complex but logical, it's just i can't find clues easily or when i find them where to use them.

about the order all i can say is that i thought you have to order bells according to a letter you read, i also put the stamp, quantity 1, but i don't know where i should get them from. do you mean the you have to order baldricks(dont even know what that is) in order to get bells?

[sny]

Harbour:There are in-game clues that tell you explicitly what the name of the item you have to order is. You didn't search the area thoroughly enough.

Brimclif mine:There is also a clear indication as to which pipes can be lowered. Once again, explore the level thoroughly to find it.

[Errol]

Assuming you're using keyboard/mouse, you can find the name of the item you're currently holding (press E) by holding the left mouse button down. I imagine you used this mechanic when ringing the church bells. As to the Mine, you just need to go around and through the locked door to the room below and look at which pipes aren't connected.

[ISA 3000]

Baldrics: You can see an items' name used in the game by hovering your cursor over it and holding down the left mouse button. Very useful for a handfull of puzzles.

Brimclif mine: That took me a while, too. You have to go into the room below the pistons. There you see a kind of connector piece on some pistons. Above you have to use those pistons in order of the connectors from closest to the socket in the floor to the one farthest away from the socket.
Looks like the game doesn't check the order but if a used piston was farther away from the one before. This way you can "skip" some of the pistons inbetween w/o running into an obvious error immediately (until you press down a skipped piston later). This makes it a little tricky to figure out the order or to brute-force it.

[Putty Patroller]

I just started playing, and I'm finding the puzzles and general flow of the game very frustrating.



Went into a house, had a fuse box with a passcode in it. Nothing to put a passcode into though. Weird. Moved on.

It was easy to understand how to the solve the puzzle regarding the baldrick and stamp, but it's reffered to in-game as "ankle-bells". So I gave up on that puzzle too assuming the game was just broken.

Went into another house and learned about a time capsule. No indication which way to travel to uncover it other than the nondescript 'by the school. Near a cliff, under a tree'. Again, pretty frustrating, but still moved on hoping to run into it an hour later.

From there I went into some sort of pub. It said there was a key in a safe. No safe to be found, but did find a lone key on the shelf. A key which didn't work on any of the locked doors in the pub. Again, really frustrating.

Then i quit to desktop.

Honestly, I don't see myself picking up the game again after those experiences. I'm just too impatient or stupid. Shame because I really enjoyed some similar titles like dear esther and gome home. But the time investment here isn't worth the tiny scraps of uninteresting story I found so far.

[WWDragon]

I also got stuck in that harbour town, with the ankle bells, pub etc.
I can't stand not being able to complete stuff and those things just got me frustrated too.

[ISA 3000]

Originally posted by Acronym Hell:

It was easy to understand how to the solve the puzzle regarding the baldrick and stamp, but it's reffered to in-game as "ankle-bells". So I gave up on that puzzle too assuming the game was just broken.

Baldrics again: Do you meanwhen you hover over the baldrics/bells and keep the left mouse button pressed down, the game calls it "ankle-bells"? Because that sounds more like a bug to me, it clearly states "baldrics" in my game.

Originally posted by Acronym Hell:

Went into another house and learned about a time capsule. No indication which way to travel to uncover it other than the nondescript 'by the school. Near a cliff, under a tree'. Again, pretty frustrating, but still moved on hoping to run into it an hour later.

Time capsule: The letters say it was buried before the school was built on top of it.

Originally posted by Acronym Hell:

From there I went into some sort of pub. It said there was a key in a safe. No safe to be found, but did find a lone key on the shelf. A key which didn't work on any of the locked doors in the pub. Again, really frustrating.

Pub: The safe is hidden. Did you take a look on the picture in the top-most floor?

Originally posted by Acronym Hell:

Honestly, I don't see myself picking up the game again after those experiences. I'm just too impatient or stupid. Shame because I really enjoyed some similar titles like dear esther and gome home. But the time investment here isn't worth the tiny scraps of uninteresting story I found so far.

What bugged me was that some of the puzzles were "dreamlike"/relied on dream logic (stuff like writing something on a blackboard to open doors). It's justified by the story of course but I still prefer puzzles that are more grounded in reality.
I still liked it a lot more than games like Dear Esther or GOne Home exactly because of the puzzles that are actually challenging and fun to solve (for me).
Not trying to convince you to pick up the game again by the way. Everyone has different tastes and if you didn't like this game, well so be it.
But you do know that most of the puzzles are optional, right? You get a bonus ending for solving everything but you can finish the game by collecting all ribbons alone. Of course if the story was uninteresting for you that might not change much.