My Early Life, Episode 2, is another excellent example of how sandbox games can be worth playing. MEL was put together by CeLaVieGames as the fifth game in a series about the same MC. It took me about 8 hours of play to get through this, but it could have been half that if I had some hints. And so this is all about hints. I dislike WT’s, but like hints, so here are mine.
The point of the game is to trigger all 82 ‘bookmarks’, or event conclusions. You just follow your common sense as to where the game leads, remembering that all the action occurs in a location where one of the three FC’s are. Except one. Just like in Ep1, there is one bookmark you cannot get by going to an occupied location. You need to go to the empty kitchen at 1830 on any day and prepare dinner – that’s the bookmark that is unique. Don’t waste time repetitively going to dinner with the FC’s: nothing comes of it.
Bookmarks are an invention of CLVG for sandboxes, and they might be useful for reducing the grind. But when you get near the end and there are a few missing bookmarks to get before you put the ‘finished’ stamp on the game (and be ready for the next Episode), you have to use good sense to know when you have missed something and are probably not going to find it by continuing to go forward. You might have to go into the code and find it, as I did. Hopefully these hints will eliminate the need for code inspection.
CLVG has not yet implemented a means of indicating more exactly where to go to find new material. Hitting the locations where you see the FCs leads to an immense amount of repetition, and putting a little mark or dot on the rooms where new stuff is awaiting you would end all that and make the game super efficient and, IMHO, more enjoyable.
By the way, CLVG does expedite the sandbox choices somewhat by putting a tiny portrait of one of the FC’s in the room where they are, so you only have to click on those places to eventually get all the bookmarks except that one just mentioned. Without this you would be much worse off, clicking on empty rooms, which having the FC portraits avoids (This is common in sandbox games). But there still is a lot of lost time. By going to rooms (populated by an FC) that cannot lead to more bookmarks being added means you will be re-seeing things that have passed. It might seem weird as these old things refer to situations that have been modified and are now inappropriate and inconsistent with the state of the game as defined by the latest changes. Just ignore them.
Another bit of trickiness also occurred in Ep1, and it is even worse here. There are actions that have to be repeated, maybe a little differently but at the same time and place, multiple times to get a bookmark fulfilled. The worst takes 7 repetitions that have to be done at 930 on weekends only in the kitchen. It will be obvious what to do, but just keep it up on weekend days until you see the bookmark get counted in the score on the top of the screen. There are two others that tripped me up, in Lina’s room at 1630 (3 or 4 reps, I forget) and in Lina’s room at 1800 (3 or 4). There are others but I followed the dialog well enough to trigger all the rest. Watch for a bookmark to be counted when you think it should be, and if it is not, come back to the same place and time on a later day and do it again and again until it does get counted. Then stop going. There are no double bookmarks at identical times and places as far as I noticed. Also, some bookmarks require choices made at different times and places to be correct.
Other red herrings: no other FC’s are involved in this episode, so after you get to name the FC who works at the grocery store, don’t waste time going back there. Same for going to the other shops, nothing good comes of that. You will see from the main bookmarks when you need to go buy something there. There is a little interaction in the cafe for a few bookmarks, but it dies out early so don’t get into a ritual of going there to see what will happen, as nothing will in this episode. Stop after you see both the interaction of the FC with her boss (trivial), and see the two guys who are objectionable customers.
Bookmarks are divided among the 3 FC’s, so concentrating on one will have you missing the bookmarks the other two are involved with.
The game is powered by the MC snapping photos of the 3 FC’s, almost always in the house, and selling them. This accumulates money, which he distributes to the 3 FC’s to get them to have ‘good’ moods, instead of neutral or bad, as about half of the events won’t happen unless the FC involved is in a good mood. You will need to accumulate a few thousand as you need $1000 for a camera, $500 for earrings, and some hundreds for clothing and to pay the weekly fee and bribe the FC’s to get good mood. Good mood can also be obtained by some other obvious actions. Bad moods are caused by some choices, like taking pictures of one of the FC’s doing yoga at the earlier of two times she does it. Learn what they are and avoid them: they never change. Use rollback to eliminate these mistakes. There was no rollback in Ep 1, and I played Ep 2 in the renpy SDK, which has rollback, so I don’t know if CLVG put it back in, as it should be.
Two notes: the pictures can only be snapped when the little phone or the larger camera icon appears in the upper left corner of the screen. They do not appear in many places where you think they should, so you need to memorize where they arise so you don’t waste time going to analogous places only to find no icon. Mostly, the locations stay the same throughout the whole episode although some additional one-time ones get added as the game progresses. You can lose all your money, down to $100, if you stay in your room after the oldest FC comes by to collect the weekly contribution of $150. She stays and asks for everything else, with no justification or reason for it. Just leave the room immediately after paying the $150. Maybe the missing camera icons and the big donation requests exist because it is so easy to collect money in this game, and these two things reduce the flow rate???
The little icon in the upper right corner which only appears when you are in the MC bedroom is where you go to sell pictures, study (you must click it 15 times each week to keep playing), and read about yoga, hacking and persuasion. You need 50 clicks to fill each of these there subjects up, but there is no use doing hacking as it is a dead end and has nothing happening in this whole episode. Forget about it.
There are no game-crashing errors, but I found two locations where attempting to take a picture throws the game into the renpy white pages. “Ignore” gets you out instantly, so there is nothing important about this. There are very few other typos or name confusions in the game, by and large it is very well debugged. And, of course, the graphics are beyond superb. IMHO, this is a five-star game.