Quern - Undying Thoughts is an Adventure Game developed by the British studio Zadbox Entertainment. It was funded
on Kickstarter on July 19th, 2015, and released on PC through Steam on November 29th, 2016, with a GOG.com release following on 27th March, 2017.
The game concerns an unnamed protagonist who becomes trapped on an island after falling out of a gateway. A letter from Professor William Maythorn explains that he has brought you, the player character, to the island of Quern in order to help him with an "essential matter". As the player progresses through the game, they must decide whether to trust Maythorn or think for themselves.
The game was generally well-received by critics and players, with many noting similarities between the game and the Myst series.
This game includes examples of:
- 3 + 5 = 4: The puzzle to turn the orange torch into the white torch involves a series of container puzzles. Three containers of varying size with bars of power have to be funneled into a fourth to a certain level.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Gamana did this after spending centuries meditating on Quern and accepting that she had lost everything that mattered in the physical world.
- The Book Cipher: The final puzzle is a book cipher coded into the Latin phrases written on each of Maythorn's twenty letters. The player has to figure out the correct letter, input it into the typewriter to get the associated symbol, then reproduce the symbol on the nearby vault lock.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Because Quern is outside linear time, makes its inhabitants The Needless and because Year Inside, Hour Outside is in extreme effect, it is an excellent training ground where an individual can spend several centuries self-teaching themselves. Gamana and her companions went from merely being the chosen champions of their people to being capable of defeating an unstoppable enemy within seconds, while Professor Maythorn went from an educated archeologist with no metalworking skills to building a computer capable of performing calculations he could not.
- Chekhov's Armory: Virtually every puzzle in the game sets up a later one, or has been set up by one already solved.
- Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Shortly before the Exposition Break, Gamana instructs the player to find some blue crystal powder, and will start nagging the player about it before it's even possible to get some.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Maythorn's journal mentions "Oshwald, the capital world of the United Empire" but does not provide much in the way of information about it beyond its six ancient gateways.
- Dead Man Writing: The good ending implies this may be the case with Maythorn. The same message plays regardless of which choice you make. However, if you use the red crystal instead of the green crystal, the message starts to break down and gets cut off. This strongly suggests that the voice you hear at the end is a recording and Maythorn is long dead. Also, the calculations to unlock the gateway took centuries and Maythorn left Quern long before they were finished. Given that time is essentially meaningless in Quern, he could have rigged the gateway so that it would bring you there well after his departure.
- Deus ex Machina: At one point, you find yourself on a bridge that has a section missing. Gamana helps you across by giving you the ability to float in midair.
- Exposition Break: At around two-thirds of the way through the game, the player is treated to a several-minute long unskippable cutscene in which Gamana explains her history.
- A God Am I: How Gamana felt after experiencing the power of Quer'nelok (the original name for Quern).
- Grey-and-Grey Morality: The conflict between Maythorn and Gamana, and which one you opt to side with in the Last-Second Ending Choice, isn't so much about good and evil as it is about idealism or cynicism. Maythorn, for all his flaws, believes that knowledge should be free and that humans are fundamentally good, while Gamana, who went mad with power despite supposedly being the greatest paragon of her people, believes that humans are fundamentally evil and corruptible and that some knowledge is better off lost rather than used.
- Guide Dang It!: Despite being a fairly simple puzzle to brute-force, the skull light puzzle's actual logic tends to stump players, due to the two clues being vague enough to interpret several ways. The intent is for the player to recognize that each symbol in the horizontal set above the arrow matches two positions on the two vertical sets inside the chest lid, which can then be replicated on the puzzle in sequence.
- Immortality Field: Quern's power is that it's a world outside the normal flow of time, so you don't age as long as you remain there. This gives you infinite time to study and become a super-genius. Doing so made Gamana and her companions go mad with power and start to see themselves as gods, eventually destroying their civilization upon returning home.
- Insufferable Genius: Maythorn can come across as this. In his letters, he often talks about how incredible his inventions are and how only a genius would be capable of figuring out how they work.
- Interface Screw: Only one type of drinkable berry produces a useful effect. The rest either blur your vision, alter your movement speed, or invert your vision temporarily.
- Invisible Writing: In two varieties:
- There is invisible ink that can be revealed by the blue crystal torch.
- There is also red ink painted over certain messages, which requires drinking diluted berries to see through it.
- Meaningful Name: A quern-stone is a tool for grinding. This is appropriate given that several puzzles involve grinding crystals and plants into powder.
- Multiple Endings: The game has two possible endings. In the first, you do what Maythorn tells you to and unlock the gateway, opening Quern up to the larger multiverse. Gamana feels betrayed and you step through Maythorn's makeshift portal to meet him in person (or so he says). In the second, you follow Gamana's advice and destroy the gateway. This means that no one else can stumble across Quern and its power. Gamana thanks you and wishes you a safe journey home.
- The Needless: Anyone in Quern no longer needs to eat or sleep. This even seems to extend to things like plants and fire, which never seem to consume fuel once lit. Even the local energy crystals are established as providing continuous, unending energy.
- Notice This: You can hold down a key to highlight interactible objects, causing them to glow white and sparkle. As the objects and scenery can easily blend into each other, it's a useful feature.
- Only Smart People May Pass: Maythorn has set up a convoluted gauntlet of puzzles for you to go through, instead of just straight out telling you what he wants you to do as soon as you enter Quern and leaving an open path for you to get there, because he wants to be sure you're a temperate intellectual who can be trusted with finishing his work, rather than some knuckle-dragging Doom Slayer who might smash up his machinery for any number of random reasons.
- Portal Network: Similar to Myst, Quern takes place in a universe/multiverse in which different worlds are linked by a network of dimensional portals, with travel and commerce between worlds via the portals seemingly being relatively common. Quern is a mythical "lost" world not mapped on the existing portal network.
- Power Crystal: Everything on Quern runs off crystals of varying sizes, which have different effects based on color.
- Orange: Low power output and a basic light source, used as torches throughout Quern.
- Blue: Reveals hidden writing.
- Red: Produces heat.
- Green: Creates a teleportation beam to a matching crystal elsewhere.
- White: High power output.
- "Simon Says" Mini-Game: One of the two puzzles to access the telescope requires repeating the pattern on a five key lock. It's easily one of the worst ones, as the sequence jumps from five to over a dozen for the final step.
- Songs in the Key of Lock: The garden is locked by a sound puzzle that requires blowing air over shaped jugs to produce the correct tones. Part of the challenge is figuring out which jug corresponds to which tone.
- The Voice: Gamana, the mysterious woman who follows you around. She appears in the form of green light since she has long since left her corporeal form behind.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Gamana never says what happened to her friends Rhoren and Tiador after their people, the Dulmar, were wiped out by civil war.
- What the Hell, Hero?: If you do what Maythorn wants, Gamana becomes furious with you. She says you will have to live with the knowledge that you have destroyed countless worlds and wonders how she could have trusted you.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: How time works in Quern. One can spend centuries there and not age a day while hardly any time passes elsewhere.
