Weird Wares Pawn Shop

November 11, 2023

Weird Wares Pawn Shop

HowlSpace Quest 7: Return to the Weird Wares Pawn Shop

If tourists want something really unusual to commemorate their visit to Howling Hollow, this pawn shop displays strange and unusual finds in its so-called Museum of the Multiverse, including a two-headed chimera cat, imagination as a form of matter, a somewhat melted but oddly polished laser shoulder cannon, a charred bunny plush with a burnt-out battery box, a newspaper declaring that Patrick and Jamie Hooligans are married, an electronic cat toy that acts like it wants to rule the world, a patch for the People’s Liberation Front of Wàn Qian Chéng in China, an envelope addressed to Lord Sam Sinister regarding Project: Solarum, a World War 2-era plasma-burst rifle, a menu from a soup kitchen run by Amanda Remous, and a giant bronze sculpture of the face of former U.S. President Richard Nixon. For sale are some less-unusual collectibles, including t-shirts depicting the town’s weirder sights, hats, collectible coins, pins, magnets, backpacks, bags, planks of wood from the town’s former buildings, mutant kudzu terrariums (do not open for any reason), desk fans in the shape of the Windmill Villa, books on the town’s conspiracy theories, and books on ghost stories. Located behind the front counter is a door that is marked as being used to access the far reaches of the multiverse to collect new merchandise.

The artifacts in question are indeed unusual on their own, with some of them originating from realities far removed from our own.

Cosmotronic Ray Tonal Sketches. Like I mentioned before, some of the land's elements had to make the jump from being LEGO-based designs to ones that could exist in the real world. This is another example of that, as this weapon originated from the LEGO Dino Attack theme, which inspired the fan-created Dino Attack RPG and the alternate ending short story 12/21/10. When translating something intentionally basic into something more complex for the real world, I realized that I had plenty of room to play around here. So, in making this LEGO weapon look "real," I took inspiration from hand-held rocket launchers and science fiction.

{Guest} scans Museum artifacts for anomalies. One appears over the Cosmotronic Ray. Guest confirms and plays tuning minigame. Completing the game activates lights and sound on the artifact.

Electronic Cat Toy Sketches. Oh, boy. I think I may have added a huge spoiler for the upcoming book Tales Across The World: A Short Story Collection, but this cat toy's most unique feature is that it contains the consciousness of an evil megalomaniac that can't do anything because of the toy's limitations. I don't want to elaborate on this one too much due to spoilers, but with a multiverse museum that is generally very serious and dour, this silly juxtaposition was a way to bring some humor into this corner of the store.

{Guest} scans Museum artifacts for anomalies. One appears over the Cat Toy. Guest confirms and plays tuning minigame. Completing the game activates motion, lights, and sound on the artifact.

Variant Ogel: Soon, I will be free from these confines! Then, I will rule…rule…your {Static}

Cat Toy: Miau Miau! Kitty will spielen!

Charred Bunny Plush and Lighter Sketches. There's a reference to the story Alpha Team 2: The Dino Attack in this land!?! This sketch reinterprets one of the gags from the story in a lawyer-friendly way (I won't bore you with the details) and includes the items to add some diversity to the Museum of the Multiverse. Because the gag revolved around smoking, I decided to make this reference as oddball and silly as possible, therefore also adding to the lore of Dimension 201. For the record, the Time Dilation Manipulator cannot interact with this artifact.

Orb of Creativity Sketches. Probably the most explicit connection to the Dino Attack RPG in the land is this artifact. Not many changes were made here to make this artifact fit into the look of the land, as it really is just a ball of energy. While I played around with how to present the effect visually, the general overall silhouette stayed pretty much the same.

{Guest} scans Museum artifacts for anomalies. One appears over the Orb of Creativity. Guest confirms and plays tuning minigame. Completing the game activates lights and sound on the artifact.

{Guest} scans Museum artifacts for anomalies. One appears over the Electro-Pulse Ray Gun. Guest confirms and plays tuning minigame. Completing the game activates lights and sound on the artifact.

{Guest} scans Museum artifacts for anomalies. One appears over the Amber Necklace. Guest confirms and plays tuning minigame. Completing the game activates lights and sound on the artifact.

{Guest} scans Museum artifacts for anomalies. One appears over the Time Music Tuner. Guest confirms and plays tuning minigame. Completing the game activates lights and sound on the artifact.

Time Dilation Manipulator Minigame. Of all of the interactive features in the HowlSpace game, this one was the most difficult to figure out. I knew that I wanted something that was challenging and unusual looking, but also something that was still intuitive. What I ended up with was a Rush Hour style puzzle game of aligning electronic nodes with a temporal waveform, which is both easy to understand and something that can scale in difficulty as the story continues (just wait until you see later instances of this minigame!).