Submachine 1: The Basement

Submachine 1: The Basement
Release dates	September 2005 (v1, original version) October 2005 (v2, extended v1) October 2007 (v3, extended v2) June 2008 (v4, extended v3) March 2014 (v5)

Submachine 1: The Basement (or Sub1), originally known as just Submachine, is the first installment in the main timeline of the Submachine series.

Setting

The game starts off with the player awaking in a room in some construction, with nothing else to do than to try and escape. To accomplish this feat, the player has to find four tiles (Tile A, Tile B, Tile C, and Tile D) and insert them into the four sockets in the room to the left of the starting room. The Basement is revisited in Submachine 4: The Lab where it is called the "Basement Section". Once again, note that the specific location is not revisited but rather a different section of the Basement that clearly shares the same architectural style.

There is also a picture of the Lighthouse hanging on a wall in one of the rooms within the Extended Version of The Basement.

Plotline

There is little to no plot development in Submachine 1; rather, the plot of the Submachine series gets developed later on in the series, particularly in Submachine 2 and Submachine 4. However, a diary entry found on the floor in one of the rooms within the Basement does provide a starting point for further plot development, especially once the diary's other half is found in Submachine 2: The Lighthouse.

List of locations

There is only one area in this game, namely:

Basement

File:Sub1 basement.png

This area consists of several rooms with the floor and walls made of yellowish wood with varying color hues. The rooms are all square, and nearly every room has one or two doors with a wooden frame, some also have stairs to go up or down. The area hosts several pipes and electric devices, along with some other miscellaneous things.

Summary

The Basement is fairly simple compared to its sequels and is quite the average escape game, especially since all the plot that is given comes from a single diary page. The original version features 9 rooms and has one ending, where the player escapes to some outside area. Extended version features 19 rooms and has two possible endings: the first, where the player chooses the blue door and escapes (as in the original); and the second, where the player chooses the red door and reaches a different end scene (later found to be the prototype of Sub2). However, only the version of the game specifically subtitled "Extended Version" has these two endings; both the original and the newer version currently on Mateusz Skutnik's site have only the escape ending.

The extended version

A remake of the original, Submachine: Extended Version, was released, and on some sites, replaced the original. This version features a Reset button and a painting of the lighthouse from Submachine 2: The Lighthouse. This game features two possible endings, and in addition, it was made possible to find a wisdom gem in the game, which made it tie better with the plot line of Submachine 2: The Lighthouse and Submachine 5: The Root. At the beginning of Sub2 the player starts off with a wisdom gem in his/her inventory; the fact that the player can now find a wisdom gem in Sub1 explains how he/she had accumulated the wisdom gem in the first place. After the wisdom gem was used in Sub2, it is later recovered and reused in Sub5. On January 1st, 2008, Submachine 1: The Basement v2.0 was released, replacing both the original and the extended version; the game-play is almost identical to that of the latter except the second ending was removed, the newer version uses the latest submachine game-play engine, and the puzzles were "made harder" by adding more rooms, making it necessary to look for the answers all over the map. On March 28th, 2014, Submachine 1: The Basement v5 was released; the only change besides updating ads was the golden coin being replaced with the  ancient coin, because "the coin doesn't fit the overall lore of the game".

iPhone version

Main article: iSubmachine

A newer version of Sub1 was released by Mateusz, which is available for the iPhone, and iPod Touch.

This version of the game contains four extra rooms housing an extra puzzle to get the valve instead of just finding it laying on the ground. The puzzle involves turning on a power switch (closely resembling a power source in Sub4's basement) that then activates a screen showing two symbols. The player then heads down to the bottom's new area to place them into that machine and receive the valve.

Gameplay is used by touching where one would normally click. This added to the game would make it more difficult to those who hadn't played the original, because in the original, the cursor changes when hovering over an item. In this version there is no cursor.

See also

• Submachine 1: The Basement walkthrough

External links

• Submachine 1: The Basement (v1, original version)
• Submachine 1: The Basement (v2, extended v1)
• Submachine 1: The Basement (v3, extended v2)
• Submachine 1: The Basement (v4, extended v3)
• Submachine 1: The Basement (v5)
• Submachine 1: The Basement changelog
• Stage Select Submachine review (10/10)