I Played Your Guy: Milon's Secret Castle, Floor 2

Well, we made it through floor one, and we're used to the game world now, so things should be much easier from here on out, right? RIGHT.

I have to give the game credit, some of the rooms are terrible in fairly new and inventive ways.

This one, for instance, is made up of lots of one-way trapdoors, which could theoretically be used to create an interesting little maze.

But because the game hates us and wants us to suffer, there's actually only the one way out, and it involves finding invisible false walls. The trapdoors are just there to fulfill the backtracking obligations any truly obnoxious game is required to have.

The trapdoors are placed so that if you jump just a teensy bit too high, you ricochet off the ceiling and back down to the outside of the room. Which means running all the way up and around to get back to the starting point, to fucking start that shit over again.

There's no actual strategy involved, it's just one big path full of holes around where you need to be.

Also, the springy floors look exactly like the false floors. I'm not sure if this is an especially hateful design element, or just laziness on the designers' part. I'm guessing a little of both.

There's a hidden shop, once you finally work your way to the middle of the room and randomly spew bubbles until you find the door.

Here you can buy the Lantern, which has been marked down from $50 to $15. The game doesn't tell you what you'll need it for, I guess it just assumes you've already used your telepathic brain powers to figure out not to go in the well before you buy this. If not, well...

Yeah good luck with that. I'm sure it'll be eminently climbable when all the ledges are invisible in the dark.

I don't remember what the balloon he mentions is, but the bubble is yours. Sadly by 'bigger' he means 'exactly the same'.

That's all we needed in this room, time to hit the next one! And oh hey, more trapdoors.
Well, I suppose it's difficult to come up with new gameplay elements in between bonghits and blowjobs. Seriously, did anyone actually play this thing before they released it?

There's a message cleverly hidden on the bottom floor of this room. See if you can find it!

Oh ho ho! You scamps you. I see what you were doing instead of designing entertaining levels.

There's a shop here, too, where we get the vest Frank mentioned earlier.

Alright, finally, SOMETHING USEFUL.

WHAT.

God damniiiiiit. Maybe this other shop has something that actually does its job.

Huh. We'll take the $10. Interestingly, power is only $5 in all other shops, making me wonder once again, WHY IS THIS GUY HELL BENT ON RIPPING US OFF? He must hate the princess, because I cannot afford to rescue her if he's going to continue to fuck me every other time I enter his shop. Times are tough all over, buddy.

Ok, at least that's a fairly specific hint. Not sure I trust you, but thanks. I guess.

Time to hit up the well. When I played this as a kid, it took me forever to figure out I could go down the well at right, because again, UNMARKED FAKE BLOCKS.

Plus, it didn't seem like a great idea to jump headlong into a well. This was around the time in the late '80's when kids were getting stuck in wells left and right, and I was way smarter than those assholes.

And this is what it looks like with the lantern. Good luck trying to distinguish between ledge and background in this zero-contrast stack of teal and green.

This isn't so bad. Just more of the fake brick action we've come to hate.

Oh hey! This must be the aforementioned fire room. How exciting!

GOOD THING I GOT MY NOT-ENTIRELY-FIREPROOF VEST ON.

I'm assuming the reason for the vest not being 100% fireproof would be that even your best quality vest only covers 30% of your body, tops.

Which is actually pretty logical, except that if your lower body is burned off, it's going to be slow goings, no matter how fireproof your upper half is.

So I fight my way through the flames to the lower part of the room, where OH GOD WHAT DEAD END WHY.

Backtracking to the top of the room and throwing some bubbles around reveals the fake wall I should have guessed would be the actual way out.

This game encourages exploration in the same way being stabbed in a parking lot encourages jogging. I just can't get excited about false floors and invisible stores when not finding them means aggravation and death.

Take this guy. Normally, you'd think finding a boss character in a dead end area of a game would mean time for a fight. HOWEVER, since we don't have the canteen yet, we can't actually beat this guy. BUT that's not mentioned everywhere, so most likely what will happen is you'll throw bubbles at this thing for a half hour before giving up and just letting it have its way with you.

Instead, it's another one of those fake wall deals, which leads to the actual boss. Now that the fire dude and vest-related quality control issues have utterly ravaged your health meter.

I have to admit, angry sentient dirt is an original idea for a video game villain.

Ohh, free hammer! Excellent, I remember that being mentioned at some point.

That's right, we need to find a store there or somthing. Great, let's head out and do that!

OH COME ON.

Yep, we have to climb all the way back out.

The trapdoors are even more fun on the way up.

And although it looks like the ledge is on the right side of the screen, you actually have to crank left as you jump out, or you'll fall all the way back to the bottom of the screen.