Hrm ... I'm exploring okay and I have a few items, but I really have no clue what's going on! Any hints for those of us just starting? or an overview?

I wish I could help, Eyebrows. Problem is, the game is completely inaccessible to me here at home. I was only able to play for a short while at RIT earlier this week and didn't get far due to the language barrier I mentioned. =/

Hm... It's quite gorgeous to look at and wander about in. But those tantalizing pieces of paper, notes, books! Maybe there's a translator lurking in the shadows somewhere ? An English-language handbook? A German-Japanese dictionary even ? :)
Anyway : the night is still young...

I've gotten aways in. Some of the puzzles were easy to solve, others I needed guess-and-check. I guess I would have needed to read Japanese to get them. Make sure to note down the papers with circles and dots and letters on them.

For a while there I was trying to solve all the "puzzles" by trying to take plates to the dinner table (for example) to complete the place settings. In point of fact,

.

That was totally my first spoiler. I'm proud.

I'm up on the third floor in a room with a pool. Not sure what to do now but will keep pointing, clicking, and guessing away. Write down all kinds of things because you will see them again. You might want to make a "map" not so much with directions - the game is easy to do that with - but note that you saw a table with this and that on it in room 2E or whatever. Cause you'll probably have to go back and look again to solve some of the puzzles. :)

I still have no clue what the "story" is, but it's a very pretty and rich game and most of the puzzles are about the right level of difficulty for me, if I leave aside the few I assume I would need to know Japanese to solve.

I've played this through to the end, and it's great. If you want to whack at it yourself, Eyebrows is completely correct, record what you see on the tables and cabinets, particularly shapes and colors, they are all clues. You will need to open up all the books you encounter, because you are collecting knowledge pages that will have some effect on what happens. (Click on Menu outside the viewport and then Knowledge.)

There are at least 3 places where you cannot get around the Japanese. At one point you will have to write something in Japanese, and make some menu choices in conversation. If you don't know the language, you will have to go to Nordinho to get the correct responses.

It's gorgeous and totally Myst-style. It's truly good enough to be a commercial product, and Seris Ko is giving it away, so enjoy it!

The first order of business, after exploring the accessible rooms, is to find the basement and figure out how to turn on the power.

Structurally, the building is 4 stories plus some basement levels. Each floor has (approximately) 9 (3x3) rooms, so it's not that hard to map, plus the game tells you where you are.

Oh, help me then, Christine! I got up to the 3rd floor but I can't figure out what to do in the moon phase/pool room, or the one just past it with the "bridge" up so i can't go anywhere else on the floor!

I Beat it
it wasnt that hard, exept for the japanese part
and for those of you who want/need this:

Eyebrow, have you opened the box in the pool?

AHA! Progress is again occurring. Thanks, slgalt!

I'll give out clues, but I'll try to avoid spoilers. Glad you made it up to 3F, Eyebrows. At this point you need to figure out the symbols that are associated with the numbers 0..9. There are also symbols for the elements (fire, earth, etc), which is considerably harder. You'll also have to figure out how to get into the "moon door" in the basement (have you seen that door yet?)

it was nice while i was able to play it.. i was wandering for 15 minutes or so, entered a room, and it went black. doesn't seem to be part of the game. i'll check back when there's an english version..

Brandy, it did that to me a lot too. You have to stay online in order to play, because it needs to load each new room from their server, and a lot of people are playing this game right now so they might easily be at their load limit. Your browser will cache places you've been before, but some things fall out of cache if you haven't been there for a while. Saving your game is pretty essential. (I wish they gave more than 3 save slots.)

i dont get it =( im stuck! i opened a couple of doors. got a few things. found the basement. cant seem to get the elevator working =( help?

I'm wandering around everywhere but can't seem to pick up a darn thing ... went up and down but am simply without a clue. Shame, because it is absolutely gorgeous to look at.

The power is actually pretty hard and multi-part.
Have you opened the 3 doors in the basement?

There's a table setting upstairs with some pieces missing.

Do you know what to do with the object in 2F North?

Down in the basement:

black screen, white dot?

after clicking 'play online' that's all i see

thanks.

I gave a try for this game yesterday evening and it took over six hours to find some sort of peace of mind BUT not without spoilers found at lazylaces.com and nordinho.net. I found no trouble to download and run this game. I am using Firefox 1.5 on Win XP.

So, I only hope that I would have given my "Best of 2005" vote for this game. Jay, if you are reading this, please add one for Cageling. I didn't use my all ten in the first place.

This is absolutely the best escape "something" game after the Dark Complex. I hope we get this in English some day. Probably not soon based on what author says on the front page. Please people, help to translate this, or teach me some Japanese ;)

My brains allmost melted when I tryed to figure out the connections between table settings and puzzles. Sometimes I just had to rely on old good trial and error method. And soon after that I found that the solution was given in some oter room just plain and simple.

I hope you folks give a try to this game like I did. I know, it is frustating in the house full of books in Japanese (unless you are fluent on that). You can think that as an extra challenge: Kidnapped in some foreign place full of strange books that you don't understand and without a clue what is going on. The Mediterranean and classicistic atmosphere however, is very relaxing and peacefull. The interior is just plain art. And based on some translations I found on other sites I understood that there's also very good story behind all of this.

Christine, Deathbaron, I bow to you. Especially since I understood that you have managed to play this through without spoilers. Are you fluent on Japanese or what?

Hi Amor, no spoilers? You flatter me, I can't make that claim at all!! I'm adequate at Mystlike stuff, though, so I had some idea what to look for in games like this. There's a lot of points of potential serious errors (meaning you don't get the 'good' ending) if you make wrong choices.

You should save a game before
When given a choice between a sword and an egg

and when given a choice between 3 flowers

and I would not have bothered with opening all those books I can't read without learning (nordinho) that collecting them was important.

ps/ Don't you find it interesting that no one complains the lack of recognized language in Myst-style games? They use language to give you an idea of the story, but many of the puzzles involve the player learning the language of the lost civilization or whatever. Cageling isn't dramatically different in that regard.

Yes, very good point Christine. I think that this should encourage people to learn Japanese like what you try to do if there's some mystic language used.

At the moment I started the game all over again since I want to understand some of the puzzles. Last time I used a lot of spoilers and escaped to one distant island in the middle of the game.

Now I am having some trouble with the "clock lock" door (again). I know the times but I do not understand where in the house you are suppose to find the right order. I know that there's a spoiler for the rigth combination but can you find the solution somewhere in the game?

And this is not an request. I try to solve it by my self. But first I am going to have a few days off from the Internet.

Happy holidays folks

Amor, sorry for taking sooo long to get back to you, hope you had a good christmas. I vaguely recall the clue to solving the clock lock is

hey people, i am a belgian kid and i'm 15 years old. I can't translate the japanees neither the english.

Ack! I'm right at the very end and it won't take the kana input. It looks right, it sounds right, but it won't let me through.

Otherwise, wow, a stunning game. For every frustration there's something wonderful. If you're good at pattern recognition, this'll be fun. The only 'meh' part was the color... in those pastel shades, and with such tiny objects, you can't tell them apart sometimes.

Also, algebra for the win.