Curate of Curiosities

Previously, we defeated Phritotch, and put an end to the Inner Evocations' plans. She graciously accepted her defeat, and allowed us to simply leave the town of Daybreak.

Somehow, despite Daybreak being deleted from normal reality, the party managed to escape the eldritch nether-realm and return to a somewhat normal life.

Oh, it looks like some of those creatures from before made it out as well. I'm sure there's nothing to...

Psych! It was all a fake! Did you really think that Phritotch would just hand you your victory just like that?

While Alicia isn't exactly in Daybreak anymore, she isn't exactly somewhere safe either. She's found herself all alone in a hallway in the middle of nowhere.

The only things to see here are portraits of her and her friends that look straight out of a creepypasta.

While most of the doorways here loop back on themselves, there's one that needs to a room that's unlike anything else we've seen so far.

Welcome to Vinclum. Despite what Alicia has to say here, this doesn't have that much to do with the Commodore 64 outside from its limited palette. It's more like Yume Nikki crossed with Moonside from Earthbound (with a bit of Magicant thrown in for good measure).

While the inspirations are obvious, I believe that this is one of the more inspired areas of the game, showing off one of its strengths: it's ability to make every single area (especially from the halfway point onward) seem distinct, which is a far cry from simply reusing the default tilesets like most RPG Maker games do.

There are no enemy encounters here, just an enormous, neon-colored maze. All the NPCs here are reminiscnent of the denizens of the Expanse that we have encountered a number of times, except instead of being monsters, they look like children's drawings, and instead of speaking in an alien language, all their text is written with a space after each character...so they're not a whole lot like the denizens of the Expanse after all.

After enough aimless exploring, Alicia comes across some conspicuously glowing thing right in the open. Sure, it could be another trap, but it wouldn't hurt to try!

It's basically the opening cutscene, but rendered in this weird colored outline style. In order to rescue her friends, Alicia must relive their deepest, most personal memories.

So, here are how the other party members' memories play out:

Lamar's mother died of cancer or something. Not sure how this relates to any aspect of his character that we've seen so far. Come to think of it, we haven't seen a whole lot of Lamar's character at all, other than provide some snarky comment on whatever paranormal happening is occurring right in front of them.

Miriam once went fishing with her dad, when a wolf stole her fish. I guess I can see how this relates to her in the present day. Of all the characters, she seemed to be most concerned with her own survival above all at first.

Up ahead, we see Alicia's severed head growing out of the ground. Probably an unveiled threat from Phritotch. Moving on.

Bring the memory cores to the creepypasta portraits and you'll be brought to your party members, who for whatever reason, instantly leave the dream world upon waking up.

This line is absolute gold.

After more exploring, and a bit of MacGuffin hunting, we reach the last of the memories.

Apparently, back whtn she was younger, she used to beat up the kids who were bullying her friend Lydia, whom we've never seen before, and will never see again. Huh, so that's what the bat's really for. Here I was thinking she was just really into sports.

Key word, "once". This thing doesn't actually try to stop you in any way.

Honestly, I'm conflicted about this. Sure, it's nice that the game's letting Alicia escape the dream world unimpeded, but at the same time, I wonder what a one-on-one fight would look like at this point in the game.

Wait, how is it that Alicia's still out and about in the dreamworld, while everyone else is stuck behind the creepypasta portraits? Sure, you could chalk it up to her innate psychic powers, but Dottie had them too, and she got locked up like the rest of them.

And with that, we leave Vinclum behind for good. But we're not out of the woods just yet. While the party was asleep, the Inner Evocations took the time to drag Daybreak, and thus the party, into the Expanse, where they can enact the final phase of their plan.

You really gotta hand it to Phritotch: not only did she manage to escape the notice of both the human party members and her own Outer Evocation siblings, but also came up with this elaborate trap just in case she, or rather, what's left of her human host was defeated.

Up next: the party explores the depths of the Expanse, the Matriarch's resting place.