Ceiling Trap I

With the revelation that the classroom has been destroyed, and with nowhere else to go, the only choice is to head past the previously screaming wall and out into the corridor. The corridor is long enough that your light will not reach the end of it, and wide enough that you have to stand in the very very centre in order to see both walls at once.

As you head down the corridor you are hit by a series of three increasingly violent shock waves. Each is a low-pitched rumble that resembles grinding stone and thunder. They are accompanied by sheets of dust falling from the ceiling and the corridor shaking beneath your feet. As you reach the point which triggers the third shock wave, if you look up you can see that the ceiling ahead retreats into a domed alcove, at the very top of which hangs a busted chandelier. Partway through the third shock wave, the chandelier comes crashing down and is an instant death. The trap is timed so that if you run continuously, it WILL hit you. The only way to avoid it is to stop and wait for it to fall, at which point it will take considerably longer to do so. It's a dumb trick, but it gets most player's twice. The first time it kills you, the second time you wait and when it does not fall, presume its a one off, only to be killed by it again.

The chandelier death is nasty. The screen is ripped from your control and the player character looks up, utters the briefest burst of a panicked gasp, then tries to shield her face as the mass of black iron and glass falls towards you.

If you trigger the rumbling in the classroom before heading out to the corridor, the chandelier crashes down before you can even see it. In the event that you do trigger this, looking up into the domed alcove reveals a tiny flurry of movement behind a long crack in the ceiling with a short wet breathing sound. It's not much of a hint towards the following puzzle, but it's something.

At the end of the corridor is an open door leading to another spiral with stairs leading up and down. There are occasional cracks in the wall through which you can see black ivy growing up outside. After a few seconds in the stairwell the door slams shut behind you, and the area is filled with wet, sickly wheezing. This is the second phantom, nicknamed Ceiling Trap.

Ceiling Trap is difficult to visualise because you only see so much of it at a time. Like all phantoms it is cloaked in black smoke, but it appears to be considerably larger than Neighbour as its body fills the entire width and height of the stairwell. It has four points that occasionally peaks out from the smoke and thick legs that it uses to drag itself forward. Each time these legs extend and grab the wall they make a slurping noise, suggesting they are perhaps like the tentacles of an octopus.  The four points flail around and are reminiscent of the eyes of a snail.

You cannot look at Ceiling Trap for long, even less time than Neighbour. As the blackness spreads towards you, Ceiling Trap is effectively propelled closer and closer. This section of the game is a flat out chase down the stairs with the sucking and wheezing phantom quickly gaining on you. This puzzle is the first to really take advantage of the unconventional key bindings, and its a difficulty barrier that lots of players fail to pass. If you attempt to climb the stairs up, you are quickly enveloped in darkness and die. If you run down the stairs, obstacles block your path and must be Left Handed. The first few are blackboards which the character happily shoves aside. They slow you down, but not by much. Ceiling Trap for its part, simply crashes through them, swallowing them into the darkness and destroying them with a series of crunches.

Then you round the curve to find your path blocked completely by a mass of broken furniture. You hammer Left Hand and the character shoves the mass as hard as she can, then glances back towards Ceiling Trap who is inevitably rounding the corner close behind. And then your phone rings...

Spires and The Mural

The constant crashing to desktop is a real problem, especially on older machines. It creates this strange situation where the game requires a relatively high-functioning PC in order to run, despite the fact that it is graphically unimpressive. The visuals are interesting, but they are nowhere near as crisp or detailed as anything you would expect from a game that requires so much tech in order to run smoothly.

With Neighbour defeated, we move on to the next stage of the game. Opening up RRE and clicking to continue places us in a new area with no visible connection to the tunnel we were just in. There is a heavy breathing in the background, but there is no sign of Neighbour and it slowly fades away as you explore. Just like the previous area, the room is dark and it is impossible to find your way without your cellphone torch.

The area appears to be a classroom or conference room. There are dusty blackboards on the wall, covered in chalk diagrams. These diagrams show similar variations of the same thing – multiple large things being drawn to, or revolving around, a central smaller thing. There is a pile of recording equipment in the corner. You can Left Hand several parts of the pile and cause things like LEDs to come on, tape decks to open and close, and empty decks to play. There is one deck containing a tape, and if you line up the angle just right (which is hard to do without any cursor on screen) you can play it. It contains a conversation between three people, but there are other voices talking inaudibly in the background the entire time.

“Male Voice 1: (inaudible) she do for it?

Female Voice: Nothing. She didn't (inaudible).

Male Voice 2: (inaudible – rising pitch suggests a question).

Male Voice 1: She's very good.”

Whilst playing the tape is not necessary in order to move on, once it ends there is a sort of earthquake rumble sound effect which causes dust to fall from the ceiling. This is, of course, only visible if you are using your cellphone torch at the time. There are a few tables and chairs, but you can't interact with them. The only other points of interest are a door a window.

Looking out of the window reveals that we are at the top of a very tall building at night. There is speculation among fans of RRE that this building is one of the spires seen from the window of the very first room. Below us is a courtyard, across from which there are a few other towers. The moon sitting in the sky is an ugly and irregular smear of ivory. There is a near trick where if you stand far enough to the left, you can sort of peak around the corner of the window and see the outside of where we are headed next – another tower covered in dark ivy.

Heading through the door reveals two paths, the nearest is a spiral staircase leading down, the second is a long corridor which your cell light is too dim to penetrate.

The staircase down eventually becomes a dead end, but the game plays with your expectations a bit. From top to bottom, you have to run down for about a minute to reach what you're looking for. All this time there is no indicator that you are making progress other than the hallway moving past. Each rung of the spiral is identical to the one above and entirely featureless. Even more misleading, any player who is put off by the lack of progress and attempts to go up at any point, quickly reaches the top again as if they have only been moving on the spot the whole time. However, if you do continue to go down the stairs, you eventually get a phone call. As always, when you answer it everything goes dark. The voice on the phone is a low gurgling moan and speaks each word incredibly slowly.

“The truth is not always beautiful.”

There is a jump scare when the call ends – the mural.

The moment you illuminate the area, you find yourself staring inches from a brick wall blocking your descent. However you angle yourself in the staircase, once the light comes up you are facing down the spiral. There is a mural painted on the wall which mirrors the diagrams found in the classroom, only this time the large things are jagged black shapes with angry white faces, and the small thing in the centre is a misshapen stick figure. The sudden image is unsettling, but the continuous screaming which accompanies it is worse. The puzzle is very simple, but the screaming is loud and realistic enough to cause some distraction.

You cannot look away from the mural and if you attempt to retreat backwards whilst still looking at it, you hit an invisible wall. You have to wait for your light to go out (stop pressing Right Hand), and then retreat back up the stairs in darkness. If you switch on the light whilst turned around, you find the wall immediately behind you and the screaming increases in volume to the point of distortion on most speakers. You never see the wall move, but it is always behind you when you look. It is possible to die in this section if you continue to stare at the wall for long enough. You hear breathing behind you and then everything goes to black. The solution is simply to keep running up the stairs. Once you reach the top, the wall slams into place and blocks the staircase and the mural fades away.

Strangely, returning to the classroom reveals that the blackboards have been broken and tossed around the room.