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If you're a Nintendo 3DS owner, chances are you also own a copy of the hit game Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Numbered 7 in the franchise (or number 4 in the rest of the world outside Japan), New Leaf boasts a huge amount of new content including becoming mayor of your town and being responsible for prettying up your town, to deep sea diving in wetsuits, as well as new furniture items and types (now you can hang things on the wall!), and new clothing types (pants, skirts, coats, and shoes).
Packed to the gills, NL also has new online play, like the ability to streetpass your home to show others your interior design, visiting the island with friends (nearby or even across the world), and of course, dream walking online into other peoples' towns.
Dream walking can be accomplished by visiting Luna in the Dream Suite and for a low fee of 500 bells, you can visit any uploaded town online through selecting regions, or searching by name of town or player. But the best way is by sharing and entering Dream Codes (a 12 digit code very similar to Friend Codes), instead of a crap shoot. Luna, your guide to a (peaceful) sleep, is modeled after an animal called a tapir, which also is the basis for the Japanese mythological dream eater, the Baku. You'll find 4 pokemon also share this connection, so the baku is shorthand for anything involving the dream world. Its a wonder why NiGHTS doesn't share the look. XD
Today's town we're taking a tour of is the creepy town of Diablu, or Diabulu. A japanese town, this one appears to have been started awhile ago, as its town tree--the tree that represents your town in the town square--is HUGE.
Sitting on the tree's planter allows you to check out the town stats, such as the mayor, the residents, and what landmarks like shops have opened and when.
If I'm reading correctly, the mayor, and thus usually the hugest house, belongs to a chap named Sanji, while another human resident is called Robin. Mayhaps One Piece fans. XD Something also interesting to point out, if you dream walk to a town which has a resident villager that your hometown also has, the villager will act as if you both are having the same dream; in other words, it appears the game has programmed villager characters with more care.
The bloodied shirt you see here is a pattern that appears in Sanji's house, which I'll get to later, so sometimes villagers will be wearing patterns players make randomly. Sometimes this works in their favor. I ran into my neighbor Rudy here, whom appears to have suffered a terrible fate.
He still greets me with a smile on his face. Its slightly unsettling, admittedly.
Still, he has some good advice...before this, he attempted to get me to walk through walls.
Asshole.
Another town we'll visit will have the same idea, but most of the villagers will be walking around like murder victims. Its fun.
Moving on through Diablu, you'll notice a huge lack of vegetation like trees. There's plenty of weeds and clover weeds , as well as dead trees.
The impressive amount of weeds you find in some of these "ghost" towns is impressive in of itself; you don't many spawn weeds a day, and sometimes your villagers will pull them up of their own volition so if you're going for the barren wasteland look like here, it takes effort.
Dead trees are created by a new feature to fruit trees in the game. Your native fruit will sometimes spawn perfect fruit, which are sometimes a different color or form than the norm (like golden peaches or pears, or even double tiered oranges).
Burying the fruit will make perfect fruit trees that only bear fruit 7-8 times before the leaves fall off and the tree dies (as well as spawning a piece of rotten fruit. it behooves you to save at least one piece so you can keep growing trees, since the fruit can sell up to 4 times non-native fruits' prices in foreign towns!
Dead trees really make haunted towns. Diablu's town is 3/4s barren wasteland, and at the lower part of the town appears to contain a graveyard with enough stones for nearly all the residents in town. The patterns for the stones is really well done. Patten making in AC requires a little pixel art talent.
These fountains also appear in another great creepy town, but that's for later. Moving along the bottom, then up, you'll pass more villager homes, until you find the beginning of a huge forest.
There are also multitudes of golden roses as well as black ones, and moving through the lush forest reminds one of stories where such dark forests hide dark secrets. Dotted through the forest are pieces of perfect fruit and mushrooms of various shapes. Its all very well done with the game's assets.
Eventually, you come to a fountain with a sumptuous and beautiful castle. And here's where the music cue should come in--
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNN.
There we go.
Translation to follow later, but I met with Sanji. Seems a nice enough guy.
AT FIRST.
Entering the house is a rather daunting lobby. Creepy, toothy clocks wind incessantly, willfully ignoring proper time. The front desk has a mannequin with a bell and a candle. To the right is a painting of a little red-hooded figure amid a dark forest.
You know JUST LIKE THE ONE YOU CAME THROUGH.
WOOOOOOO.
I turned on the light here, so you could see the painting a little better.
Moving to the left hand room is a very pretty room, a first class hotel room, furnished to the top with opulent beds and chairs (part of the Roccoco series). The room appears blue due to the new feature in NL of ambient light. By changing the color of the lotus lamps on the table from pink to blue, the ambient light casts a cold blue light (refurbishing a a huge new feature in NL). Built for 2, the room appears to be all in order. Lucky's portrait appears here, fittingly enough. His quote's at left.
Opening the drawer produces the dialogue at right. Fittingly.
Rolling around on the beds (by putting the beds together, you can roll over to the other one seamlessly, but it makes you look like you're levitating.
When I rolled around, I noticed something I didn't the first time I visited. Check out the white thing behind the right hand bed.
An axe and a bloodied pillow. COZY POSEY. 8D;;;;
I took leave of the room and headed to the back room of the ground floor, which led to a back room festooned like a museum. Up on museum podiums are odd relics like Majora's mask or Midna's hat as well as a Creepy Bust (part of Jack's Creepy Set), a phonograph that plays K.K. Dirge, and a copy of the forest painting on the back wall.
The painting seems different....its missing something. Looking at it at an angle produces a surprise:
This Dolly, part of the Nursery Set, will be a popular character in many other towns we'll look at this month, especially in the infamous Aika village. Here, she seems to be the subject of the forest portrait, so keep an eye on her.
The right hand room of the house leads to a banquet hall complete with a chocolate fountain and turkey. The room's a bit dark since the wall sconces are turned off, but in the back is another copy of the forest painting, hung above a glowing fireplace and next to another creepy bust. I turned on the lights to inspect it.
Its changed again....>_>
Let's check out the attic! The attic is always a great place to go in creepy places, and following the laws of the terrorverse, moving along the Y-axis will only spell trouble for you, if you look at a haunted house like a cartesian coordinate system on LSD.
....A Satanic ritual room. Swell. Dolly's back with a cow bone, an axe, and a caldron. Before a headless statue with bat like wings (a fake version of the Valiant Statue that Redd makes to swindle you), Dolly apparently makes devilish sacrifices to it on a nightly basis, probably from the guests who stay at the hotel.
You'll notice Dolly's painting to the left. Its empty of course.
The back "window" has a nice pentagram, and its flanked by jomon pottery. The flowery outer ring to the stained glass window is a nice touch.
The basement is the last room to visit, and its the doozy.
Hoo boy. Found the kill floor! The pattern we saw on Rudy came from this bloody clothing pattern, which is pretty much refurbished onto every available cloth portion of the furniture. Refurbishing is new in NL, which basically allows a player to customize things like wood patterns, color of frames, or reupholster the cloth parts of chairs or beds with clothing you can buy in-game, or by using custom patterns you make, as seen here.
Its everywhere. The chair, the tablecloth, even the loom, and the lampshade. The shell object in the back is a new kind of item that you can customize to be a music box that plays any one of K.K. Slider's songs. The box here plays Hypno K.K., probably one of the most unsettling tracks the pup has next to K.K. Dirge. Ironically, the image to the track on youtube is a screencap from Aika Village, again, the most infamous of creepy AC towns.
There's also an electric chair seat. Its about as comfortable as it looks.
Dolly's portrait is back, and it leers at you as you lay upon the bloody bed. Her axe is in hacking reach.
The room's also complete with dripping buckets that catch water, implying leaking roofs. Its all a nice touch in Sanji Bates Motel.
Nice place. Wouldn't wanna live here. @_@
And that's just ONE of the two houses in Diablu. Let's check out Robin's place.
This...bodes well.
Dressing a little like Miyako from Siren, Robin sets the mood. Some creepy towns tie all their Player houses together in a coherent story, and Aika does it best, though Sachi Panda--a place we'll visit next time--also seems to tie their stories together. Here in Diablu, Dolly appears to sew the pieces together, as she seems to be the main character in Robin's house.
Robin herself doesn't appear in the house (though there are times a Player Character CAN appear in their own house). Sometimes its a great jump scare, since you don't always expect them to be there. Today, she stayed out, being creepy.
The house has a continuous storyline through its rooms, which must be visited in a specific order to understand the chronology properly. The front, lower room is Room 1.
An artist lives here, evidenced by his pallet, his easels, and of course his beret. He looks like he's gotten a present, as its wrapped up on his shelf. Wrapping paper's a new feature in NL, allowing you to wrap up objects to be unwrapped by other villagers or players.
An alternate view. The tv plays static for an hour, which tells you its 4 am. 4 am usually has rather quiet but unsettling music. When the next hour rolls around, 5 am, the tv station broadcasts its colors; this helps you figure out what time it is in a particular town because the time clock does not display while dream walking.
Room 2 is upstairs, so when visiting Diablu, make sure to visit the upstairs room before the ground floor side rooms.
The artist has unwrapped his present, and whattya know? Its Dolly! She watches over his shoulder as he begins to paint.
What is it he's painting?
Looks like a forest scene.
Hmmm.
Room 3 is the left hand room. Our artist seems to be heading to bed, as evidenced by his PJs. Dolly's up on his shelf, admiring the work he's done.
The lights are normally off in this room, and while the bed's in the way, getting in it and rolling out the other side of the bed allows you access into the room to allow you to turn on the light to better see the room.
And the painting.
HMMMMMMM.
Room 4 is the back room. The lights are out and so is the tv actually. Since the mannequins can't be put into bed, we have to assume our artist is asleep in bed, snug as a bug in a rug about to be AXE MURDERED BY HIS NEW DOLLY.
Her painting, btw, is still the same view of an empty dark forest as in Room 3.
Room 5 is the right handed room.
I don't think I need to explain what happened here.
Room 6 is the basement, the last room of our story. Our poor artist has met his end by the business end of an axe. But where's the devious doll that did the deed?
Well the axe is by that canvas...let's check it out.
She's slipped into the painting. As this painting appears in the huge hotel home we visited earlier, we have to assume Dolly and her painting are the same from that house too. Did the artist somehow unlock a possessed doll and become her victim, and how does she relate to the hotel of horrors in the middle of the dark forest? Perhaps she makes sacrifices pretty often there...maybe she came first from the artists' house, or perhaps she sent herself to the artist with the intent of taking his life. The theories abound here in Diablu, which is what makes these towns so interesting. Without a direct narrative, you are left with figuring out what's going on by the rooms and homes themselves.
But I don't wanna keep this great dream walking town to myself. If you wanna take a stroll through Sanji and Robin's town, mosey over to the Dream Suite and type in this dream code.
If you got a neat creepy town or just wonderful town to share, drop us a line here with its dream code!
Fu fu fu....
---Dio (10/10/13)
Game, images, and characters belong to Nintendo. Screencapped by me.
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