Darkness! Explosions! Tediousness! (S)Cats!
Now that we've beaten up that celestial annoyance and claimed his key, we can now proceed relatively unmolested. Luckily, we're a hop, skip and a jump (quite literally) from where we need to go.
Leaping from the flying platform and ending up here being the hop...
Going to the right and falling back here being the skip...
And behind the waterfall being the jump.
Breathe deep, and let 'er rip, Gil!
The destroyed blocks leave weird black voids behind them on land, too. It's like they occupy some kind of anti-space.
Hmmm... a suspicious pit! Could it be...?
Yes! It is! Oh, Long Fall, my love, we are reunited at last! Take us away to your mysterious reaches yet again!
Woah. Who turned out the lights? Although our sprite glows in the dark (given Gil's mutant features, I wouldn't be surprised if he was radioactive), everything else is dim. We wouldn't even see that crow up there if it weren't for his luminescent eyes.
We can do eyes.
Sweet ghost of the Demoman, that's a lot of destructable blocks. Now, as you may have noticed in previous screenshots, but Gil's bombs don't destroy a lot at once. They only peel off about a layer of blocks per bomb. Each bomb also takes a second or two to charge up, and several more to explode.
So I'll just be over here, digging through piles of rubble.
Slowly.
Hmmm—a doorway! But given that blocks respawn if you switch out, probably just a warp back, since Louie can't climb out of here. But there's gotta be something in this pit besides just a way out. Let's explore thoroughly!
Slowly.
Burrowing into the corner here reveals a familiar, sleepy friend. Considering where he was hiding, my, he's a flexible little button.
And Gil said, "Let there be light!"
Let's blow this crumble stand.
Now that we can see where we're going, we can cross this pile o' bricks and see what's on the other side. And—could it be? Another Long Fall? So soon? Be still, my heart!
Well, that was rather anticlimactic.
However, there are several of these paths, and each of the narrow spaces between them has slime enemies in it. We should be careful as we descend.
Slowly.
A fork in the fall? Hmm. Gil can look down, but I can't. Left or right?
Well, I'm left-handed...
Woohoo! And we literally fall right on top of another treasure chest containing yet another Health Container. We're one chunky froglerfish and company.
Of course, the other branch looks like it goes the way we're actually supposed to go.
Things get precarious here. And look! There's the lamp. How it's lighting the areas above it, I couldn't tell you. Nor why the other cave areas were so daylight bright.
Not to mention—TREASURE!
Last but not least, our final medicine! (I know in a previous installment I referred to it as being out-of-the-way. I was actually confusing the location of the Red Power Ring in the mines with a medicine location. My apologies. Although this particular medicine is out-there enough that it is difficult to get to.)
Now, ah... How to get out of here?
Oh well. Warp door in the pit, take me away!
So, you know. We can do all this brick-breaking business to get down there again. Slowly.
No, to properly progress.
This fall would be long if it weren't broken up by little shelves. The pattern continues on the other side.
Still, that means it'll be extra-easy, right? Up you go, Louie!
Yipe! Rocks fall, Bop-Louie nearly dies!
That's why these little nooks are here, of course. Duck into them to avoid the falling boulders. The timing is a bit tricky, though. Even though you've just seen rocks fall, it isn't always safe to go. One particular pattern of falling rocks is timed such that the time between it at the next rock fall is just slightly less than the amount of time you need to climb to the next safe place.
Not a very long climb in the end, though.
Entering the next room suddenly causes Louie to slide along the ground without moving his feet.
And then gravity immediately packs up and leaves house. It's a bad sign when things begin with the laws of physics quitting on you.
Um... hi.
We appear to have a cat in a Warp Pipe and a blank white smiley face orbiting the perimeter of this partially-flooded room. This... motley collection of sprites is our sixth boss. Maybe bosses. It's not really clear if they're separate entities or not.
I shall dub them... Aball and Catstello.
First, let's become someone a wee bit more water-tight.
First discovery: You cannot jump on the cat. (Knowing this game's logic, cat ears = triangular, triangular = pointy, and pointy things = pain.) That means assaulting the happy floaty ball thing is probably the best course of action. It is a head, after all, and we all know what smooshed heads produce!
Bingo!
And since the cat has to serve SOME sort of purpose, and it bobs up and down in that pipe in a way that seems evasive...
Bingo again!
And that's literally all there is to this fight. The sphere does nothing except prowl the room perimeter, and the cat does nothing but bob in and out of the pipe. No projectiles, no nothing. The ball and cat both speed up, but that's pretty inconsequential.
Five hits to the cat, and whatever bizarre spiritual link unifies them into a bizarre whole ruptures and causes them both to vanish into clouds of dust. The warp pipe is not part of their collective, apparently, since it stays put. But the cat and the unflinchingly happy, blank white ball, linked at the soul as they are, are dealt with.
Now, to plunder their underwater store room!
A green character to grab a green key! Chromatically appropriate.
Dayum boy. With this key claimed, we are very nearly at the end of the game! We've got one Health Container and one boss left to take on before we can open that door. As such, I expect the next installment to be quite long. Ah well.
Next time, on Let's Play Ufouria: We can has more kitties.
See you later!
- Bosses updated!
