DayMare Town (series)

Overview
DayMare Town is a series of point and click, escape from the room (or "area", rather) freeware puzzle games created by artist/programmer Mateusz Skutnik. The player finds themselves in a series of odd towns with people who seem very distant. Each game has certain goals to accomplish in order to beat them, which requires the player to use their mouse to find and apply objects to certain situations to open up more areas of the game in hopes of solving it.

The games feature black and white hand-drawn graphics, some of which are very simple, and the games are also very sparse in sound. They are also considered to be pretty difficult in general, even to the veteran escape from the room player (as (Skutnik himself had stated with the first DayMare Town game it was his most difficult escape-type game yet).

DayMare Town
Also known as DayMare Town 1, the player begins the game in the middle of this town's courtyard, which is surrounded by buildings that they can access.

The object of the game is to find several Chinese puzzle blocks and put them in their proper place. Behind City Hall are two rows of objects shaped like bowling pins where the puzzle pieces can be inserted into their bases. Once the player has found and placed all the pieces in these places, they are able to lower a bridge to win the game and travel to the next town. There are also two endings possible, one of which involves finding and looking at 10 birds that are hidden in several areas of the game. There isn't much of a difference in between the endings though, just a slightly different congratulatory message at the end.

Except for The Librarian, there are no people at all to find for quite some time during the course of the game. All the inhabitants seem to be gnome-like, being short and having large amounts of frizzy, dark hair. It has yet to be revealed if something sinister happened to this town (several inhabitants appeared to have been held against their will, particularly one that the player could find chained to a wall), even with the release of three DayMare Town games so far to date.

DayMare Town 2
This game plays a bit differently than the original, arguably being a bit easier and running on a monetary system needed to help beat the game, as the player can find many coins scattered throughout the town, which are required to buy things in order to help solve several of the games' puzzles and to eventually beat it. Also, the player has to perform several small duties for several of the people in town (in the form of puzzles, of course) and find and return several special eggs to their place in the town’s museum in order to win the game. The towns' inhabitants are also immediately seen in the game, unlike with the original when no people are seen for quite a while, although most of them either seem horrendously depressed or ill.

Once the last egg is found and returned and one final puzzle is taken care of, a hot air balloon will be released, carrying the player off to places unknown at the end...

DayMare Town 3
This game begins right where DayMare Town 2 left off, showing a brief cutscene where the player's balloon lands in another odd town, then wakes up in a hospital.

Even though still unusual, the townsfolk have the most dialog in a DayMare game yet. There still seems to be something unusual about them though...

This entry in the series combines the difficulty level of the original, along with the monetary system again of the second game. The player must gather coins and objects and figure out how to leave the hospital (the front door is boarded up for some reason), then wander around town, using several objects that were bought, along with solving puzzles in order to try to beat the game. The puzzles are unique, not always working in a logical way, like getting the bridge to work to cross over to the next town at the end of the original's. There are many tasks of various kinds to complete, and the game is made even more difficult with a set amount of items that the player can carry, so they will have to be careful in balancing out what they do not need, although items can be sold to various individuals in the town though in order to lighten the player’s inventory load.

Trivia
DayMare Town 3 has several achievements to unlock as extras, the first in the series to do so.

Links
Official site