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AG Community Playthrough #43: Sinking Island

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Welcome to the community Playthrough of

About the game:

Sinking Island is a game made by Benoît Sokal who is also responsible for the Syberia series, Amazone and Paradise (my personal favourite), and for any regulars in this forum it is no secret that I’m a fan of Sokal’s work.

Sinking Island is a bit different from all the other Sokal games. Where all the rest is about a person taking a journey and contains many different locations, then this entire game takes place on a very small tropical island, and pretty much the whole place is open to us right from the start. It does however have one thing in common with his other games, and that is that it has some beautiful graphics, especially in the form of the Art Deco hotel.

Another difference is that this is a classical whodunit. If you have ever read anything by Agatha Christie then you know the drill, a murder in a closed environment with a limited amount of people who could have done it, everybody has a motive, everybody is lying, everybody is a suspect and it is up to the brilliant detective to solve the case.

Walter Jones an old bugger of a billionaire has taken a tumble over a cliff in his wheelchair, shortly before his newest project, an absurdly large luxury Art Deco hotel on a tiny tropical island, is about to open. On the Island are his entire family, lawyer, architect and a few islanders, everybody hated, despised or is at best completely indifferent to his death.

We in the form of inspector Jack Norm is sent to investigate, and to make the matter even worse, there is a large tropical storm hitting the Island making it impossible to send in reinforcement, and also providing a timelimit for the game.

The Gameplay:

One of the features of the game is that time passes in the game, and the game can be played in two different modes: Adventure or Race Against Time. The difference being that in RAT mode you only have a limited time to discover everything and solve the murder, and it is entirely possible to screw up the entire case and/or not discover all the dirty secrets.

For the purpose of this playthrough, I will recommend that you all play in Adventure mode, which is also what I will be doing myself (having a clock ticking just stresses the hell out of me). But if anybody wants to play in RAT mode you are also welcome, just be aware that you might not have discovered what the rest of us is talking about.

Regardless of which mode you are playing time will however still tick, and different events each day will happen at certain times. For example you will get a phone call, return to your room to answer in private, and when you get back, everybody has moved to a different location. This adds a lot of realism to the game, but it can also be extremely annoying imo, especially if you have just taken the long walk to talk to someone, and then you are booted right back to your room Shifty Eyed

Another feature is that there is a number of different mandates, or objectives that you have to solve, like “Was Walter Jones’s death accidental?”. Each mandate has a progression bar, and you can have many different mandates at any given time, and solve these in whichever order you choose at any given time of the day, making the game somewhat non-linear. However in Adventure mode, time won’t pass to the next day, until you have solved all mandates possible that day.

Finally you have a so-called Personal Police Assistant (PPA), which contains both a Character Database, where you can see all the information you have gathered on the different suspects, a Clue database where can see and compare clues, and a Progression part where you can see how you are doing on the different mandates. The game however explains this in great detail, so I won’t say more about them here.

Apart from this, it is a standard point and click interface, and a large part of the game consists of talking to the different suspects. But there are also more traditional inventory puzzles etc.

The Community Playthrough:

This playthrough is open for anyone who wish to participate, new forum members or veterans alike, everybody is welcome and I hope that as many as possible will join us.

For anyone who has never taken part of a community playthrough before, the idea is that we play the game in small parts, and then discuss what we played. I will lead this playthrough, which means that I will post a description and/or picture of when you have to stop, and how long you have to finish each part.

My plan is that for the stop-points I will use the different events that happens when a certain amount of time has passed, like a phone call, lunch, dinner etc.
You should however be aware that not everybody might have solved the same mandates or discovered the same secrets you have at the same stoppoints, so remember to use spoiler tags, and also try to write a small non-spoilery description of what is in the spoiler tags, so the other participants will know if it is safe to read or not.

At the end of each day everybody (playing in Adventure mode) should however have solved the same mandates, so here we can discusss things a bit more freely.

The plan is that the playthrough will start in a few days, perhaps already tomorrow?! It depends on when I have played enough ahead, to be able to post a stop-point. And you will have one week to play each part, though that will also depend on whether or not everybody is up to speed.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Where to get the game:

FireFlower from FireFlower games has generously offered a 50% discount for anyone participating in this playthrough:

FireFlower - 04 August 2017 01:25 PM

And here’s a discount code if you want to get it 50% off on FireFlower Games: FFG-QKMF-DZPM Smile

But the game is also available on Steam and probably many other places.

As far as I know, it should also run without any problems on modern systems, at least it runs perfectly on my x64 windows 7.


I think that should be it for know Wink

Edit:
Ohh - If a mod will please pin this thread!

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Steam version installed and ready to go

     
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wilco - 06 August 2017 06:04 PM

Steam version installed and ready to go

Same.

     

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I have the FireFlower version installed.

     
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I’m ready to go - I’ve got the original disc version which seems to work on my Win 7 64 bit OS. I’ll be playing un-timed!

     
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Why has Kate Walker taken over my PDA?

     
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BFG version installed and ready to go.

Is there an opening cinematic to watch? If there is, maybe Iz can clear us to watch that, just so I/we can make sure the game is running properly on our respective systems.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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rtrooney - 07 August 2017 12:44 PM

Is there an opening cinematic to watch? If there is, maybe Iz can clear us to watch that, just so I/we can make sure the game is running properly on our respective systems.

Yes, there’s an opening cut scene where your character arrives at the island.

     
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On the beach. Body in front of me. Guess this is where the game starts.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Part 1 - Day 1

Okay there is no need to delay things any longer, lets get started.

You should play until you have had a bite to eat and receive the first phone call from your wife!


(Nice hotel room btw - why do I never get to stay in hotel rooms like that?!)

This should happen about halfway through day 1, though that depends entirely on how fast or slow you are playing, as it is a timed event. (For me it actually happened right in the middle of a conversation with someone Shifty Eyed)

You have almost one week until Monday evening (CEST) the 14th of August to complete this part.


A couple of small hints:

The navigation can sometimes be a little confusing, and many locations have more exits or directions to go than what is immediately obvious. So make sure to move the cursor around on all screens to find all exits, and take the time to explore a bit instead of going the straight route.

Slightly more specific hints regarding navigation, which I have placed in spoilers in case you don’t want any hints:

At one location I kept coming back to the same screen when I exited it! I’m not sure if it is some kind of bug, they had skimped on the graphics budget and just reused the same screen, or if it was meant to be some kind of puzzle?!? But with a bit of persistence I got to where I wanted.

In order to get to the three upper floors, you need to switch elevator at the heliport.


Fell free to make and post screenshots, but try to keep them as spoiler free as possible, and also remember to us spoiler tags to the best of your discretion.

Also, even if you don’t feel like you have anything else to say, please post when you have completed a part, so I can make sure that no one is left behind, and feel free to comment on the pace and ask for extra time if you have fallen behind, or to speed things up if you are getting impatient.

Have Fun

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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RL event came up. May not be able to start until Friday. Hate to be in catch up mode from the get go.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Joined 2016-02-18

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Just returned from holiday and decided to try and join in. Last Sunday I bought a few of Benoit Sokal’s early Canardo books, so it will be fun to play one of his games. I bought the game from FireFlower (thanks for the discount code by the way!) and downloaded it straight away.

     
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Joined 2017-04-14

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Away until Saturday but looking forward to my first CP.

Have fun! Smile

     
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Anyone started? Just a small remark so far, and sorry if it sounds picky.

Does anyone else find the lack of lip movement in conversations jarring? It sticks out to me like a sore thumb. Just makes the whole conversations feel unnatural.

     
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I’m guessing that maybe it was a solution to catering for dialogue in several different languages that would have been difficult to match lip-synching to in every one?

     

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