Does it really end everything? (Spoiler Warning!)

[ultrapowerpie]

So as you know there's a second option to all this House Stuff: Ending it. The game literally says that by choosing it, you kill it off completely. Is this completely true? Is there a way to reverse it? I'm too scared to choose the option as there's so many different more runs I want to play XD

[HoroSaga]

Yes, ending the game in that way will apparently delete your saves and lock up the game so that you can no longer play it.

However, the developer stated that you can reverse it by going into your temporary folders and deleting a certain file. I'll have to poke around to see if I can find which file it was.

EDIT - When you want to play again, you can just do a file search for the "homd.homd" file and delete it. Some people say that there might be two copies you need to delete, depending on where and how your game is installed. Once those are gone, you should be able to play the game again.

[Metagenesis]

But remember to back up your saves if you want to keep them!

[trainerstar3]

...Now that i think about it, wouldn't it be easier to just make a backup of both homd.homd files?
Heck, they're just plain text files with this in them:

old patterns
0
in new thread
3000

0
0

Couldn't we just write this back in, if not much changes when it goes boom?

[ultrapowerpie]

Interesting, thanks for the advice!

[Amestria_Amestria]

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Yes, ending the game in that way will apparently delete your saves and lock up the game so that you can no longer play it.

Seriously? That's what happens if you listen to the Clock-Faced God?

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by Amestria_Amestria:

Seriously? That's what happens if you listen to the Clock-Faced God?

I haven't done it myself (yet), but I've seen it mentioned by at least a few other players. Most notably when they were trying to figure out how to play the game again, afterwards. :)

[King Banhammer]

Yeah. He's about as trustworthy as you'd expect a dude who can only communicate with you after you descend into madness would be. Go figure.

[Amestria_Amestria]

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Originally posted by Amestria_Amestria:

Seriously? That's what happens if you listen to the Clock-Faced God?

I haven't done it myself (yet), but I've seen it mentioned by at least a few other players. Most notably when they were trying to figure out how to play the game again, afterwards. :)

Couldn't you just uninstall and reinstall the game?

[narcomanic]

Originally posted by King Banhammer:

Yeah. He's about as trustworthy as you'd expect a dude who can only communicate with you after you descend into madness would be. Go figure.

Well, to be fair to Morbazar, I don't think they ever actually lie to you about what's about to happen, which is something for a literal god of trickery.

[Amestria_Amestria]

Thinking about it, a competent god of trickery should be perfectly capable of tricking people without resorting to lies. Like, lies aren't technically trickery, they're deceit.

Hey, wait a minute - does anyone think Morbazar might be an avatar of the Dev? The dev's user name is pixeltrickery, Morbazar is the god of trickery, doing what Morbazar wants not only destroys the House in-game but also makes the actual game unplayable, so in a way Morbazar has real world power...

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by Amestria_Amestria:

Couldn't you just uninstall and reinstall the game?

From what I've heard, that doesn't work. When you achieve the "bad" ending, it creates a file that prevents you from playing the game. That file isn't deleted when you uninstall the game, so even if you do a clean reinstall, that file will still prevent you from playing the game.

If you simply remove the file, then you don't even need to do a reinstall. The only tricky part is tracking that file down.

[Amestria_Amestria]

That is amazingly avant-garde.

[trainerstar3]

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Originally posted by Amestria_Amestria:

Couldn't you just uninstall and reinstall the game?

From what I've heard, that doesn't work. When you achieve the "bad" ending, it creates a file that prevents you from playing the game. That file isn't deleted when you uninstall the game, so even if you do a clean reinstall, that file will still prevent you from playing the game.

If you simply remove the file, then you don't even need to do a reinstall. The only tricky part is tracking that file down.

Correction, it MODIFIES a file. And we know exactly where that file is.

[Akninirith]

While in practice I find this kind of metagame function somewhat upsetting, in principle it is a fascinating and strangely attractive device - a game whose machinations include a state in which it no longer works as a traditional game. For that matter, given the developer's expressed influence from Failbetter Games, it really fits with an existing motif; in Failbetter's own pioneer MMO-thing "Fallen London", the player can, after a considerable journey of blood and sweat and tears, reach an epiphany and a unique state of being, with the caveat that the player's account becomes permanently and irrevokably unusable thereafter.

In perfect honesty, this sort of thing in a game is actually beautiful.

[TheyCalledMeMad]

A late note:

The game actually *resists being screenshotted* (both in Steam, and using Win10's Snipping Tool) after you've ended everything. Steam's screenshot key simply doesn't take a screenshot; and while you're using the Snipping Tool, the HOMD screen turns entirely white.

(The Snipping Tool thing might not be deliberate, considering how HOMD shows up in the toolbar and alt-tab menu somewhat inconsistently. But it's definitely odd that Steam screenshots just suddenly stop working.)

I took a couple of screenshots while HOMD was deleting itself, but I couldn't take any screenshots of the main menu once it was done. I suppose I could just take a picture with my phone, but that sounds like effort. :)