In Carmel Games' point-and-click adventure Vortex Point: Time of Your Life Carnival, when a little boy steals a rare and powerful statue from a collector of mysterious items, the Vortex Point's premier (and only) detective agency dealing with the occult is on the job. The boy was seen fleeing into a nearby traveling carnival, but nobody's been able to track him down since. To play, just click to interact whenever your cursor changes as it passes over something, and click an item in your inventory to "equip" it to use on the next thing you click. You can also combine items you're carrying when possible by clicking first one, then the other. Like most of Carmel Games' titles, Time of Your Life Carnival is designed to fit cozily into a break rather than take up an entire afternoon. It might be one of the developer's best looking recent games, with great detailed backgrounds, and a quirky story to match. The downside is that some of the puzzles aren't that intuitive, most centering on solutions that do technically make sense, but aren't necessarily clearly telegraphed. "Why would I think to use item X on object Y?"... well, because that's what you do when you're stuck in adventure games, obviously. Still, Vortex Point: Time of Your Life Carnival is otherwise an appealingly weird and fun little game, with a story that has a satisfying twist, and serves up a tidy, appetizing dose of adventure.
Play Vortex Point: Time of Your Life Carnival
Thanks to Moti for sending this one in!
I had to consult a walkthrough at a couple of stages, but the end result was kind of disappointing. I thought that the last step would be
to use the red and green flashing lights from the ghost train ride to press the ferris wheel switches, not just press one button.
Or maybe something to do with Dannabelle
Some hints for when you're stuck
First of all, you don't actually need to find money, just coupons.
Fingerprint kit
Use it on two pretty similar objects to find fingerprints that aren't in the database, but do match each other
Getting into the carnival
There are two directions you can take from the ticket booth. One takes you back to the map, the other...
Cotton Candy
It might not be obvious to you - or at least it wasn't to me - but when you first enter the carnival, you can actually click on the tent in between the cotton candy stand and the trailer.
Hint: Somebody who isn't at the carnival, and may not be able to leave their place to get to the carnival, may be hungry.
Bolt Cutters
Use those on the chain in the scenery in the ghost ride. Hmmm, who might want to trade such a strange item?
That screw
That's what you put into the air conditioner. I'm sure by this point, you've probably tried other things with the hopes the air conditioner stops working and sweats that dodgy guy out, but nope.
Out of interest,
What happens if you press the other button on the ferris wheel? Do you get a slightly different ending?
Also, does this ferris wheel go at break-neck speed or something? Surely it would be slow enough that he could still shoot you- oh never mind, why would anything make sense in Vortex Point anyway?
The puzzle ENTIRELY escapes me. And the walk-through is no help because the puzzle changes each time. H!E!L!P!
The arrows add or subtract a number (seems to be 2 usually) from the previous number. Follow the arrow pattern - add or subtract 2 (or whatever the number is in the pattern) to get your answer. E.g. the walkthrough example is 135 -> 133 (which is 135-2) -> 131 (which is 133-2).
Regarding the puzzle:
More specifically, the arrow indicates an operation that must be performed on THIS number to get the NEXT number. Right arrows mean +2, down means -2, and up means +3.
Regarding the final scene:
You can eliminate the threat with either button. It's not that exciting, but if you want to know:
Clockwise (right button) yields an infant (which seems wrong to me -- shouldn't you get a 10 year old kid the first time and a... nothing? Single cell? the second time?) and Counter-clockwise (left) yields a skeleton a la Last Crusade. (He chose poorly.)
I OWE YOU MY VERY LIFE.
(I know I have nothing but choice in these matters, and I am free to play or not play these games. THAT BEING SAID: I have never finished a Carmel game and thought, "That was well done.")
Thank you for that, ChairmanMUHC. I was too lazy to replay it to find out for myself.
And yeah, the maths doesn't work.
If the statue owning guy saw a 10 year old kid riding the ferris wheel, does that mean he had the machine set to just go back and forth a bit without ever completing a full turn?
If that's what the ferris wheel at this dodgy circus does, then maybe other weird things would be happening. I mean, maybe that cotton candy our colleague ate is going to make him grow an extra arm or something.
If I lived in Vortex Point, I would've just walked out of there with the statue and not asked any more questions, knowing the weird ish that occurs in the neighbourhood.
And ditto about Carmel games, Maude Buttons. Some are amusing, but even they know they're being silly with their gsmes. Otherwise, why did they even give you a wallet to start with?
I think I should elaborate on what Catherine was getting at regarding the math. I noticed the same plothole myself.
The carnival manager claims to be 174 years old chronologically; the precision of that number implies its accuracy. He also claims that the ferris wheel increments/decrements ages in 30-year intervals.
This means he could only use the statue to become 144 years old, then 114, 84, and so on. He couldn't possibly masquerade as a ten-year-old kid; he'd jump from 24 to negative six.
walkthrough, please.
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