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Worldgate
Worldgate is a point-and-click Flash adventure game that combines Myst-style pixel exploration, an unapologetic ripoff of Stargate's premise and iconography, and the 3D animation stylings of terrible Reboot fanart. There is new-agey music playing continually in the background, and the increasingly weirdass story isn't even close to finished yet. It's curiously, awkwardly charming. Like Myst, really, or Stargate. Or your cousin with Asperger's who manufactured a hand-painted, 2000-piece Minecraft playset because his parents wouldn't buy him the game. It was made by a guy named William Buchanan, and with that critical backstory out of the way, off we go.
(don't worry, there'll be far more backstory shortly)
We begin our adventure in the worst equipped mining camp in Wyoming. The only things present to intrigue our wandering eyes is an oil lamp and our research journal. I nab the journal, and neglect to crack her open because my keen adventurer senses are sensing nearby treasure, and also I maybe forgot how for a second.
There is a chest! And as is the fate of every interesting container in an adventure game, it's locked. What fiendish puzzle will I have to sol
uh. That was literally just behind me. Disappointment fuels epiphany, and I figure out how to open the journal. There is a tiny icon at the bottom of each icon's tiny icon, and if you click on it you get a closer view. If you click on the journal again, you open it, and,
We've struck backstory!
"15, October, 1888: A discovery. I don't know what to make of it. We've tunneled only 50 feet, and came across an empty pocket in the earth. It is a perfectly spherical cavity, and within it, a device so bizarre looking I don't even know how to describe it. Someone has already been here.
18, October, 1888: Something truly remarkable happened today. For all its peculiarity, I was able to discern that the device had two metal conductors protruding from the back. I connected a light bulb to them using some spare wire. That light bulb filled the entire mine stronger than daylight for the split second before it exploded. This machine produces electricity, and from seemingly nothing.
19, October, 1888: We dug an additional 15 feet and came across a second cavity. This one contains a large circular frame structure. The frame appears to include a holster for a metal wand. Also in the chamber mounted to the wall is a cabinet containing a beautiful assortment of gemstones.
20, October, 1888: Today I doubt all that I know about science. I placed one of the gemstones into a receptacle on the wand, and then inserted the wand back into the frame, and the space inside the frame... came to life. I stepped through it, and was instantly somewhere else - instead of the walls of the mine, I was in an alien looking corridor. Immediately, I retreated, and was back inside the mine.
21, October, 1888: The time has come to determine what I've truly found. This mysterious generator seems to produce an enormous electric current with no input. Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse... they'll all be interested in using it, for better or for worse. But it is the second device... the portal... the "worldgate"... that concerns me. I have no idea who buried these machines, but before the world learns of them, it is my responsibility that they'll not bring any danger to the world, or the world danger to them. I must explore."
tl;dr: 19th-century dude discovers a fusion generator and Made in China stargate in Wyoming, pokes it, With Great Power Comes Great Et Cetera, let's go have adventures. Speaking of adventures, I just realized that there was a locked chest I had yet to plunder. After using my massive intellect to deduce I had to use the key on the chest, I crack her open and,
A bounty of things! The Leyden jars are the original forms of the capacitor, and Wikipedia will do a better job explaining them than I will. Apart from that, we have a cotton shirt (the blobby white thing with a row of buttons on it), a lighter (the tiny rectangle with the unfortunate gold texture) and a bundle of dynamite (the fulfillment of my hopes and dreams).
Now, at last, we can adventure with confidence.
HAHA, NOPE. We can't really be expected to blunder into dark corridors, can we? Who knows what's in there! Rocks! Clowns! Clown rocks! Let's follow this wire around the high, unfenced mountain ledge instead. Far less scary.
The wire leads us to a reading table with a presumptuous name.
We find naught upon it but a bundle of unsafe wiring. Now, what plus wires creates light...
The game, unwilling to let me kill myself in funny ways, graciously accepts our old-timey pseudobatteries.
The power jars work just fine, I just wanted to show that there is another path on the other side of the ledge, which features a small pool of water. The water doesn't accept my dynamite either. No one understands what we have together.
Meh. Forward into adventure. Adventure leads to a short corridor with a single branch, albeit a branch that's giving off an eerie blue glow. At the end of the corridor is the titular worldgate, which is currently hanging out unpowered. Two out of five screenshot errors miss the guy that yells out chevrons.
Shiny. A full five screenshot errors for you.
I knew someone would accept my love.
Except, no. Round peg. Hexagonal hole. They say it goes against the laws of nature, that only blue-red power modules with inexplicable names will fit. They said the sun orbited the earth, too. We'll make them see. They'll have to see.
As necessity dictates we abandon the fulfillment of our love, we turn to the larger, rounder hole. It is unpowered and empty, but contains a plain, depleted stick. I'm just oozing innuendo today. I should go on radio. I also take the stick.
Turning to the side, we come across a fusebox with a bottle of whiskey sitting on top of it. I reach through the curdled memories of my childhood home and grab it. The game does not immediately end with me downing it all in a breath and stumbling off the side of the mountain in a fountain of vomit and dynamite, which proves that Mr. Buchanan did not expect goons to ever find this game.
Inside the fusebox, we find treasure! Dynamite, whiskey and precious stones are already worlds better than the last things I found rooting around in a hole in Wyoming. Unfortunately, I can only pick up the purple pentagonal gemstone, and it doesn't even list a street value.
I immediately attempt to assuage my frustration by sticking valuable objects in holes they don't look like they'll fit.
Pervert, they called me, but I knew it would pay off some day!
Elevated by my success, I immediately turn and stick the thing in the other thing. And. And!
Oh. Oh, yes.
Huh. Well. That doesn't usually happen when I do this...