Line #58 VideoGame/Jigsaw


1	It's a quarter to midnight on New Year's Eve, 1999, and you're at Century Park, avoiding the crowds that have gathered there to celebrate the incoming last year of the millennium. On a whim, you decide to follow a mysterious and attractive stranger... and wind up on a journey through time, collecting puzzle pieces and foiling the plans of an adversary who is trying to change the outcome of some of the most important events of the 20th century. Complicating matters further is the fact that this adversary is the very attractive stranger you encountered earlier...
2
3	''Jigsaw'' is a work of InteractiveFiction by Creator/GrahamNelson and can be found [[http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm here]].
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5	Despite the name, as far as we know it has no relation to the ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' franchise.
6	----
7	!!This work provides examples of:
8
9	%% * AlternateHistory: [[spoiler:Black is implied to come from an alternate timeline where a number of things went worse than they did for us.]]
10	* AuthorAppeal: The level of actual historical significance of certain ''cultural'' events, as opposed to scientific and military ones, is highly debatable. But the Enigma fragment is ''ridiculously'' detailed - fittingly for a game written by a mathematician.
11	* BittersweetEnding: On the one hand, [[spoiler:the world has been saved, and if you did everything right, you are now in a relationship with Black, with a jewel that you should be able to sell for enough money to live comfortably]]. On the other hand, [[spoiler:you are now trapped in the year 1900 and almost certainly won't live to see the twenty-first century]].
12	* BeenThereShapedHistory: Or [[CloseEnoughTimeline kept it from being changed]], in any case. You:
13	** [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI assassinate archduke Ferdinand]]
14	** send mayday signal from the UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic
15	** ruin Fleming's experiments (to give us penicillin)
16	** gather Creator/MarcelProust's papers
17	** save [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Lenin's]] life
18	** keep Music/TheBeatles from getting too irritated to rehearse (as Black is trying to annoy them into giving up)
19	** help out UsefulNotes/TheWrightBrothers
20	** avert a [[UsefulNotes/HistoryOfTheColdWar missile crisis]]
21	** get captured during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII
22	** solve the Enigma (if you have the patience)
23	** save the [[UsefulNotes/TheSpaceRace Apollo 17 crew]]
24	** [[UsefulNotes/IronCurtain tear down that wall]] (with a [[TheAllegedCar Skoda]])
25	** help fight for [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain women's rights]]
26	** do some SpyDrama in Egypt
27	* ButterflyOfDoom: If you fail, [[TimeCrash history crashes]].
28	* ContrivedCoincidence: The key to the drawer in Sarajevo somehow finds itself in Century Park, decades later.
29	* DatingCatwoman: Later in the game you dance a veritable spy tango with Black.
30	* EnemyMine: The player and Black aren't always on opposite sides. %% this needs context
31	* {{Epigraph}}: The game begins by quoting Creator/TSEliot's "Gerontion".
32	* FeaturelessProtagonist: The player character has no features whatsoever, to help the immersion. Black, the antagonist, also has very few features - we don't even know their gender, because the GoldenEnding has them [[spoiler: enter a relationship]].
33	* GoldenEnding: It's not enough just to save the universe; you also have to [[spoiler: complete a ''second'' extremely difficult collection quest perfectly]] to get a remotely happy ending.
34	* GratuitousLatin: Latin quotations abound. For example, on the ormolu clock it says "tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis" [[labelnote:translation]]times change and we change with them[[/labelnote]], and Kaldecki's motto is "felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas" [[labelnote:translation]]happy is he who can understand the causes of things[[/labelnote]].
35	* GuideDangIt: Enigma. In RealLife, that took not one, but two bunches of ''very'' good mathematicians. Almost as difficult here.
36	** Some of the puzzle solutions are a little... esoteric. Because we all would climb a monument in the park and blow it up, wouldn't we?
37	* InstantExpert: You learn to play the mandoline by doing it a couple of times, which takes minutes of game-time.
38	* InstantIllness: If you're bitten by a mosquito in the Suez Canal chapter, you'll drop dead from malaria within a few turns.
39	* IntangibleTimeTravel: The beginning of the Enigma chapter, and only there.
40	* JigsawPuzzlePlot: Yes, in the figurative sense as well as the literal.
41	* NewspaperDating: Used in many of the chapters, often to give a general idea of what the chapter's about as well as for the actual date.
42	* NewYearHasCome: The story begins and ends on New Year's. [[spoiler: Specifically, it begins on New Year's Eve, 1999, and ends on New Year's Day, 1900.]]
43	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Black's mentor, the eccentric Hungarian (despite Slavic-sounding surname) inventor Kaldecki, who in no way resembles UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla.
44	* OurTimeMachineIsDifferent: It consists of a puzzle board, an ormolu clock and the "curious device" - all of these have distictly {{steampunk}} flavour. Also, you will sooner or later end up in [[PlaceBeyondTime the Land]].
45	-->The Kaldecki Effect needs an enormous temporal potential to work, you see. You can't just travel from anywhere to anywhere. Time flows downhill like water, he said. If you want to go from event T1 to event T2, you have to ride the wave. So much for Einstein.
46	* PermanentlyMissableContent: Nearly everything in the game if you aren't careful, including those vital [[VideoGame/BanjoKazooie jiggies]].
47	* ProgrammingGame: You get to program a robot in the Moon chapter.
48	* RummageSaleReject: The statue of Kaldecki is wearing:
49	-->an air-raid warden's helmet, a sickle in one hand, a soldering iron in the other: an old-fashioned cavalry officer's tunic and a pair of miner's trousers, then Indian sandals.
50	* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: What Black is trying to do, and the player is trying to prevent Black from doing. Usually.
51	* ShutUpKiss: [[spoiler:... is actually the solution to one of the puzzles]].
52	* SlidingScaleOfCollectibleTracking: Pegs the needle at the 'difficult' side.
53	* TemporalMutability: The PC is sort of a one-person TimePolice who keeps time on the right track, because history seems rather fragile.
54	* TerminatorTwosome: Black tries to make history better - your goal is to keep it the way it is.
55	* TimeTravellersAreSpies: Both Black and White (the player character) in the Enigma chapter, and Black in the B-29 chapter.
56	* TrappedInThePast: The fate of [[spoiler: Black and White both]] in the end.
57	* UndercoverAsLovers: In the Suez Canal chapter.
58	* ViewersAreGeniuses: Some of the puzzles may force the player to do research in order to solve them -- one, for example, requires at least a basic knowledge of Proust's ''A la recherche du temps perdu'', and the episode with the Enigma machine doesn't explain quite as much as one might hope about how said machine works.
59	* WhiteAndGreyMorality: Black (and Black's late mentor) is not as much a villain as he is a misguided idealist willing to use questionable means to achieve the desired ends.
60	* YouAlreadyChangedThePast: [[spoiler:This is the case with the Cold War episode. It starts with you and a thoroughly confused Black in a mysterious ''white'' space instead of a black one, hinting that ''you're'' the one influencing history this time. Your actions are already part of the timeline, and now you need to actually perform them or else the timeline will change. This enables the game to include a Prevent-World-War-Three episode without the meddling Black trying to cause it - Black wants to change history, not ''end'' it.]]

Context VideoGame / Jigsaw