I just had another one reoccurring dream, one that I hadn’t had in a long time. I really like this dream ‘cause it’s sort of like one of those point and click adventure games. I’m a “normal” news reporter (basically a gender-reversed Lois Lane), and one of the NPCs I meet, among others, are super woman, a (sympathetic) male werewolf, a (sympathetic) female vampire, etc. The whole “game” takes place in a single building. A tornado/typhoon storm is coming, and I’ve got to keep everyone alive by taking shelter in the basement of this industrial building.

One of the puzzles involve shinning a spotline in a dark corner of the ceiling to realize that there’s this sort of “trap door” up there, where if you don’t do anything, water will come in and flood you and drown you. Once you’ve “seen” the trap door with the spot light, you still need to find ladder to reach the trap door, convince the group to clear the boxes on the floor out of the way so you can set up the ladder, and then do something in the room in the trap door to block water from coming in (I can’t remember what; in previous dreams I solved this puzzle, but tonight I got “stuck” here). It was something like asking one handy man to take a break, so you could “borrow” his ladder, and ask another handyman to take a break so you could release pressure in a valve before doing something else.

For the three supernaturals, you basically had to go through the dialog tree to set them up to protect the main entrance to the basement in specific ways. The first-floor/basement room has windows looking out directly outside, and at some point of the game (it takes place over a couple of days), you need to have superwoman take this huge heavyset detached wooden door, and just use it as a giant plank to lay across all the windows and just hold it in place during the typhoon. You had to similarly take adventure of the superhuman strengths of the other two supernaturals, but I can’t remember how either. I do remember for the vampire, during the dialog tree, you can ask her to join you and the rest of the group in the basement, and she makes some sort of vague remark about how you shouldn’t have invited her in; it’s sort of intended to be foreshadowing for when you later find out that she’s a vampire (in case you’re not familiar with the mythology, they can’t enter your home unless you explicitly invite them in), but I’ve “played this game” before so I already knew. She won’t kill your group or anything even after you’ve “invited her” (which is why I say she’s sympathethic), and so she’s just playfully teasing/telling herself an inside joke there.

There’s some character development and backstory for all three of the supers, which I think is supposed to be one of the main draws of this particular game. Super woman is suffering from low self esteem, and the impostor syndrome, for example. There’s a bit of characterization for the non-supers as well (one guy has asthma, and there’s a puzzle in keeping him alive despite the occasional gusts of winds which may blow too much dust into the area), but they don’t tend to go as deep as the supers. The handymen are those stereotypical lazy, ungrateful bastards who complain no matter how you interact with them (they complain when you ask them to go on break, they complain when you ask them to resume work, etc.)

It’s one of those “you have to do the right thing on exactly the right days” type of game, where otherwise everyone dies (sucked out by a tornado, flooded and down, etc.) I don’t think it’s as cruel as the early Sierra games (if you fuck up, I don’t think you ever need to reload further back than the day you happened to have died on), and there’s a bit of leeway and extra time such that if you do have that time, there are bonus objectives, like taking a picture of the actual cyclone as it approaches the building (I guess that’s the whole excuse as to why you’re a reporter). Probably one of the bonus objectives involves some fan service with the vampire.