Black Mirror II - Walkthrough
BLACK MIRROR II ♦ WALKTHROUGH ♦ CHAPTER 1 ♦ CHAPTER 2 ♦ CHAPTER 3 ♦ CHAPTER 4 ♦ CHAPTER 5 ♦ CHAPTER 6 ♦ PUZZLES ♦ SCREENSHOTS ♦ DIARY
CHAPTER 1
The Photo Shop
Twenty-four years later, we find a Darren Michaels in the cellar of a photo shop in Biddeford, Me. The power’s out and Darren’s boss Fuller has ordered his summer assistant to replace a fuse. Left-click on the “crammed shelf” to the left of the photo screen to identify a box of fuses, again on the box itself to take it and right-click on the box in inventory to extract the single fuse. Open the fuse box to the left of the shelf, remove the cover of the second fuse from the left, remove the burned-out fuse, drag the new one into its place and throw the little switch at the bottom right to turn on the power again. You can take the bottle of developer fluid. It’s on a shelf behind the palette. (Double-click on the palette to tip it over.) You’ll use this later in the chapter to develop some pictures.
The Front Room
Climb the stairs. Fuller now orders Darren to place the shop’s sign out on the sidewalk. Simply left-click twice on the sign to do so automatically. Or don’t. Darren can venture into the darkroom (the near-left exit), the rear office (the middle exit) or return to the cellar. At the first two locations, you’ll have time to grab a couple of items — in the former, the pen in the mug to the right of the office phone; in the latter, the distilled water at your feet — before Fuller summons Darren back to the task at hand. (Otherwise, you won’t be able to visit these locations until Darren lures Fuller from the store later in the chapter.)
The Street
Outside the store, you’ll meet Angelina. She wants her photo taken. Darren automatically ushers her inside, where Fuller takes over the shoot and dispatches Darren on a pair of errands: delivering a letter to Mrs. Biba at the diner and collecting a parcel from the post office. These new tasks are not inter-dependent and so can be performed in either order. We’ll do the delivery first simply because it gets you into the swing of things a bit faster.
Town Square
From the photo shop, head downscreen to the town square. This scrolling screen is a hub that includes exits to Town Hall (which you can’t enter until Chapter II), a hospital over at the left (which comes into play later in this chapter), an exit to Darren’s mother’s little house (ditto; it’s the street between Town Hall and the hospital) and Biba’s Diner over at the right.
Biba’s Diner
Mrs. Biba is the lady behind the counter. A man is speaking to her when Darren enters — lots of folks asking about the photo shop today! — and bumps by Darren belligerently, perhaps even deliberately, on his way out. Talk to Mrs. Biba. She takes delivery of Fuller’s letter out of sight of her husband and is righteously pissed off by its (as-yet unknown) contents, for she orders Darren out with a message that Fuller can go to hell. Follow up by asking about “Fuller’s letter,” and you’ll get a hint about the nature of her exchange with Fuller. Darren protests that he’s just the messenger. “ … but you still work for him, don’t ya?” Mrs. Biba puts in. “Making some nice dough? Problem is, it’s not his money,” she says, “it’s … ah, forget it.” It’s what? Is “mine” the missing word? Leave. On the way out, Darren is stopped by the doctor in the front booth. He was to meet with Darren’s mother to make arrangements to hang her paintings in the “Health Centre,” but she hasn’t turned up. Darren doesn’t pay much attention to this and can’t do anything about it now in any case. In the manner of unsettled young people with too much on their plates, he’s suddenly in a great rush and hurriedly tells the doctor he’ll call his mother later. If Darren has completed both tasks, return to the photo store. If not, head for the post office.
SOUVENIR STORE/POST OFFICE
The post office is in the souvenir shop by the harbor just up the street from the photo shop. The counter lady Rosie is running her yap with a girlfriend when Darren arrives. Listen for awhile. The conversation runs through a range of gossipy topics before establishing that the red convertible outside belongs to the nameless blonde customer. Darren will have to try to interrupt them (ineffectively) by talking to Rosie to come up with a solution: setting off the alarm on the convertible. However, note that the lady won’t notice the alarm until she’s distracted from her chatter by the open door coincident with Darren’s reentry into the shop — and that you have just 10 seconds to enter before the alarm clicks off on its own. (If that happens, you’ll have to set off the alarm again.) Talk to Rosie again. Darren hands over the collection note automatically and comes up with a parcel. You’ll also establish that there’s another parcel for Fuller awaiting collection — but Rosie’s not about to turn it over to a rude boy who doesn’t have the paperwork. (Strictly speaking, this isn’t on your to-do list at the moment — it doesn’t become pressing until Darren sets out to develop Angelina’s pictures — but an observant player can get a leg-up on this task now. During his exchange with Rosie, Darren is standing right in front of a pad of blank collection slips. Looking at them earns you an extra conversation topic — “Package for Darren” — and using that topic gets Rosie to turn her back just long enough for Darren to peel off a slip.) If you’ve completed both tasks, return to the photo shop. If not, head for the diner. (See “Biba’s Diner” above.) You can talk to the young woman watching the sea at the railing outside the post office to learn she’s mourning her late friend, Carrie, who drowned herself here two years earlier. Side Street When Darren returns to the photo shop after completion of the delivery and pick-up errand, he runs into Angelina again. She’ll complain of being groped by Fuller and the two make arrangements to have Darren deliver the photos to Angelina’s hotel . She takes off down the hill to the promenade and the strange man who bumped into Darren in the Diner emerges from the alley beside the shop and sets out in pursuit. You can’t follow him. Fuller emerges to summon Darren back to work and, inside, takes delivery of the parcel and assigns a raft of domestic tasks. However, if you look in your diary, you’ll see only one of them achieves “task” status: the one we anticipated earlier about collecting the photo paper from the post office.
PHOTO SHOP
However, you can’t leave the shop until Darren calls his Mom with the reminder of her appointment at the diner. There’s a phone on the desk in Fuller’s office (through the middle of the three exits at the back). Simply left-click on it. Darren gets a busy signal and, after a to-do with Fuller (in which Darren learns his mother had called earlier about “Adrian” and a “mirror” — anticipating events in chapters V and VI), he sets out to his Mom’s house automatically.
Mom’s House
Darren finds his mother unconscious on the floor by the telephone. Use the phone on the table to call an ambulance and note the three-part task supplied by the doctor afterward. Darren needs to find all his Mom’s medicine, her medical history and her insurance card. The card is easy: It’s in a pillow-like blue handbag on the flowered chair in the living room. The pill dispenser left of the tea cup covers most of the medicine and the rest comes with a left-click on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom to the left. That leaves just the medical history. Darren doesn’t recall the name of his mother’s doctor (as you’ll learn if he tries to use the phone again at this stage) but it has to be around here somewhere. Best bet: the address book in the bottom drawer of the commode beside the bed. (Note that you have to open the top drawer first. Try a second time to open the bottom one.) Alas, like every address book in every adventure game, it is locked. The key is beneath the flower pot on the bedroom windowsill. Use it on the address book to open it, right-click on the open address book to identify Mom’s old doctor as Dr. Wakefield and use the phone in the living room to arrange for her records to be sent to the hospital. Darren can then set out for the hospital.
Hospital
Darren automatically turns over the medicine and insurance card to the nurse at the front desk and, after a prolonged, non-interactive wait, gets a new task: sorting out his mother’s insurance. Evidently she either didn’t initiate the last payment, the bank didn’t make the transfer or the payment somehow didn’t register with the insurance company. You need to bring documentation for the transfer to the nurse and she’ll take care of it for you. (There is no special urgency about this, but the task has to be completed to finish Chapter I. You’ll get a reminder about it if you haven’t taken care of the insurance issue before delivering the pictures to Angelina.) Darren then automatically enters his mother’s room and learns she’s in a coma. He blames Fuller for the missed message. Leave the room. You’ll find the pursuer man talking to the nurse at the desk. He gets one look at Darren and is off like a shot. You don’t have to follow him now — events will wait on your arrival back at Fuller’s shop — but that’s one of two tasks you can perform at this point. Either order will do. You can take the stethoscope at the foot of the bed and the laxative in the bedstand. The former comes into play later in the chapter and the latter in Chapter II. Talk to Darren’s mother twice and she’ll grab Darren’s wrist and say: “Mirror. Don’t go through the mirror!”
Following the strange man
Outside the hospital, this strange man will cross the square and vanish into the side street leading to the shops. You’ll lose him as soon as you enter that screen. Or have you? Try to enter the photo shop via the front door and Darren sees the strange man inside talking to Fuller. It’d be nice to hear what he’s saying. (It’s required before you do anything else in this thread.) The front door is too obvious an approach and the back door turns out to be locked with a hook-and-eye arrangement. But the window above the door is open. If Darren could lower a hook of his own through the gap, he’d be able to lift the latch. Sure enough, the fishing line from the tool shed at the rear combines nicely with the broken-off handle of the rusted bucket to the left of the back door. Slip this “fishing line with hook” through the window and the latch lifts. Step inside to learn only that the man seems interested in Angelina and Darren both and Darren decides to followup with Angelina. But that’s still a ways down the road.
Confronting Fuller
You can’t continue the surveillance — the man is gone by the time Darren reaches the street — but Darren can now venture inside and confront Fuller. Reenter the shop to find Fuller has vanished. Descend to the cellar to find the photo screen has been raised to expose a door. Fiddle either with the control ropes at the upper left or the door itself and Fuller emerges. A confrontation quickly develops and Darren ends up jobless on the sidewalk out front, ruminating about how to lure Fuller out of the shop so he can develop Angelina’s pictures.
Find Proof of Mom’s Insurance Payment
You probably already have an idea of the target: the previously untouchable “bureau” (i.e. roll-top desk) in Mom’s bedroom. It’s locked, and the lock is a puzzle.
The open desk yields three items: an odd jewel box or “casket” that can’t be opened at present (you’ll have to pick this up first to get at the other stuff); the bank book (which shows with a right-click that Darren’s mother did make the insurance payment); and, inside the bank book, a letter from a unidentified “C” that refers to payments (monthly $1,500 transfers from a bank in Willow Creek in England that run counter to Mom’s stories about her income) and seemingly to Darren (“even if he has now left home”). After extracting the letter, bring the bank book to the nurse at the hospital desk and you’re good. If you haven’t yet followed the strange man from the hospital to Fuller’s shop, head there now and see the entry above. If you have, drop down to the one below.
Developing the Pictures
You need to get back into the photoshop. Visit the post office. You’ll now find the convertible-driving blabbermouth in the corner looking at fashion magazines. That’s a clue. However, you’ll have to first talk to Rosie about “customer” — blabbermouth doesn’t have a proper name — to actually hatch the plot. She observes that the lady’s husband is loaded and that even if he wasn’t, her friend would do well as a fashion model. Now talk to the woman. Darren feeds her a load of bull about working on a magazine story and, when it turns out she doesn’t have any pictures of herself, volunteers that Fuller is a famous New Zealander working undercover. Blabbermouth seems genuinely interested, but she’s not quite sold. You’re to bring her some of Fuller’s work. Of course, it doesn’t have to be Fuller’s actual work. You’ve probably seen magazines at a couple of locations: Mom’s coffee table and the hospital lobby. You can take the ones in the hospital lobby — they’re on the table near the door — and then talk to Rosie’s pal again and represent a handful of the pictures therein as Fuller’s. Fortunately, blabbermouth is too flattered to ask questions and says she’ll call Fuller from her car straightaway. Head back up the hill to the shop to find Fuller setting out for the photo session. The shop is now empty and the rear door remains unlocked from Darren’s earlier surveillance. Search the shop. The film isn’t lying around in the open. Click on the tripod in the front room and Darren suggests that, if Fuller left the Angelina pictures behind, they must be in the safe. That’s on the right side of the office in the rear. Combination? You will have to sort it out as bad guys did in old movies . Use the stethoscope from the end of Mom’s hospital bed on the safe and, in the close-up view, turn the dial back and forth using the left and right mouse buttons, reversing directions when you hear the tumblers fall into place (and not allowing yourself to be distracted by the faint tinkling sounds you’ll sometimes hear for wrong numbers). Starting clockwise or counter-clockwise, the combination will always be 90-50-70-20-30. Then open it up and take the film canister. You’ll need four additional items to develop the photos:
Distilled water. Right at your feet when Darren enters the darkroom (if you haven’t already picked it up). (This is behind the curtain at the left side of the shop’s front room.)
Fixer. Also right here — at the upper right-hand corner of the water dish on the counter.
Developer. On the cellar shelves behind the pallet. (:Left-click twice on the pallet to knock it over.)
Photo paper. This may prove a challenge — especially if you neglected to collect a blank collection slip at the PO in the earlier visit and so have no handy reminder of this incomplete task.
The uncollected parcel contains the photo paper. You cannot find the missing collection slip in Fuller’s ratty office and will have to create one yourself. To reprise: Visit the post office, look at the pad of blank slips on the counter (just left of the register), ask Rosie for a fictitious parcel for Darren and steal a slip when she turns her back. Now you just have to fill it out. Use the pen in the mug just to the right of the phone in Fuller’s office at any location other than the post-office interior and Darren scribbles the details on the slip. Will that do? It will not. Back at the PO, Rosie objects to the absence of the mailman’s signature. You can’t track down the mailman. But two characters will give you a lead on him: Mrs. Biba says he’s probably at the hospital and the hospital nurse that he delivered get-well cards for Darren’s mom. And of course once Rosie has mentioned the mailman, you can cut to the chase and just visit Mom’s room. Sure enough, you’ll find an array of cards on her nightstand — including one from mailman P. Puck. Click on them to identify the mailman’s signature, take the leftmost card and use the pen or card on the collection slip to add the signature. Take it back to Rosie and the photo paper is yours. Once Darren says he’s got everything he needs, you’re ready for the darkroom.
The developing part’s easy; it’s just a matter of using the right items in the right places. Use the developer fluid and distilled water on the developer dish at the left, distilled water on the water dish in the middle and the photo paper (unwrapped in inventory with a right-click) on the enlarger at the right. Now use the film can on the developer container between the two dishes and pour in some developer. Left-click on the container to pour out the developer fluid, then add the fixer and left-click on the container again to extract the negatives. Here’s where the potential for mistakes creeps in. Use the negatives on the enlarger, left-click on the enlarger to activate it, wait four or five seconds (using the little timer to the left ) and turn off the enlarger with a second left-click. The exposed photo paper is automatically returned to your inventory. Drop it in the developer tray. No in-game timer is available here, so, once the developer tray appears in close-up, tick off about 15 seconds on your watch (counting “one-one thousand, two-one thousand …” will work in a pinch) and then drop the photo in the water to arrest the process. Darren here comments on the quality of the picture. As long as he says the contrast and brightness are OK, you’re on the right track and you’ll just have to run through the process a second time at the same specs to complete the batch. Darren will then automatically complete the remainder. And if not? Pay attention to Darren’s advice. “Not enough contrast”: Expose the picture under the enlarger for a longer period. (One to three seconds isn’t enough.) “Too much contrast”: A shorter period. (Six to the maximum of nine seconds is too much.) “Too light”: More time in the developing tray. (Fifteen to 18 seconds is ideal.) “Too dark”: Less tray time. Note that the waste basket to the left of the developer tray remains red under the cursor after Darren has examined it. What gives? This enables you to toss out any photos that you botch during the initial exposure phase — rather than having to dunk them in the developing tray even when you already know they’re going to turn out badly. Once Darren’s work is complete, the doorbell rings. It’s Mrs. Biba with a sealed envelope for Fuller and the raw material of a new task for Darren: Find a way to open the envelope so Fuller won’t notice. You don’t have to address this right now. It’s one of two tasks you can perform — three, if you haven’t yet dealt with Mom’s insurance — and, once again, any order will do.
Blackmail
How to open the envelope in an undetectable way? Ah, steam. Jet back to Mom’s house, take the empty tea kettle from the stove, use it on the sink just to the left to fill it with water, then on the stove and activate the stove with a left-click. The kettle begins to boil instantly and you just need to use the envelope on the kettle to unglue the mucilage and produce $1,500. Blackmail money, evidently. Suddenly you’re beginning to make better sense of the contempt in which Mrs. Biba holds Fuller … and how Fuller was able to afford his expensive kit. But what did Mrs. Biba do to expose herself to blackmail? Darren can’t sort that out right now, so just place the resealed envelope in Fuller’s mail slot and make for the hotel.
Photo Session
Enter and climb the stairs. Long cut-scene in which Darren takes his own pictures of Angelina. Once Darren finishes up the roll, they agree to meet for dinner at the diner. On automatic, Darren leaves to find the strange man downstairs questioning the porter about Angelina’s stay and again quickly vanishing when he spots Darren. (Darren takes copious notes — presumably the better to identify him for police the following day.) You can follow him again, but only to the hotel exterior. If you’ve already identified the coin for Eddie at the junk shop, you can now retrieve his cane from the porter and save yourself a separate trip later. (See below.) That clears the way for Darren to borrow Eddie’s slide projector later in the chapter. This leads straight into preparation of the second batch of photos. Outside the hotel, Darren runs down his requirements to develop the photos in his mother’s bathroom: a red light, two flat dishes, something to serve as fixer and a makeshift enlarger.
Red Light. The necessary red light can be found on the string hanging outside Biba’s Diner. Go grab it. Darren will automatically use the trash bin at the right to reach the lights suspended in front. No clue why this makes the other lights in the chain go out — except perhaps as a reminder to the player that Darren’s already completed this task.
Fixer. The acidic vinegar just right of the bread bin on the middle of the diner’s counter will work fine.
Flat dishes/bowls. Mom’s kitchen is a good bet, and you’ll find one in the drawers beside the sink. The other is in the dog cage beneath the left-hand window in the photo shop’s backyard.
Enlarger. This requires a bit of work — though it’s possible you’ve already inadvertently cleared the path.
Darren can adapt for this purpose a slide projector atop the shelves in the junk shop next door to Fuller’s place. Click on it and talk to proprietor Eddie and he declares it’s not for sale or loan. Actually, the situation is not quite so cut-and-dried. Eddie is a curmudgeon. You just have to draw him out — finding a topic that allows him to break out of this mode — and it’s not one of his initial array. Look at the microphone on the left side of the counter and then talk to Eddie. Now you can ask him about “blindness” and “coin” and identify a rare coin for him. Just use the catalog on the right side of the counter. (It’s hidden behind the left rear pocket of Darren’s jeans.) Eddie now invites you to retrieve the cane he lost to the owner of the Wild Coast Hotel in a poker game. The only hotel employee we’ve run into is the porter in the lobby and apparently they’re one and same. Just be persistent: Talk to the porter about “poker game” until you run out the topic and he’ll surrender the cane. Back at the junk shop, talk to Eddie about the cane (or just use it on him) to return it and then about the projector as a proposed quid pro quo and it’s yours. With all this stuff in inventory, enter the bathroom at Mom’s house to set about developing the pictures. This time, the developing process is automated and Darren winds up with a batch of pictures for Angelina and one picture for himself in inventory.
Cutscene
The scene should shift automatically to Darren’s date at Biba’s Diner. (If it doesn’t, some task or tasks remain incomplete. Have you held off addressing Mom’s insurance business or held onto the blackmail money?) Key event at dinner: Angelina opens the casket from Mom’s desk to find it contains a picture of Darren’s mother and a man that was shot outside Black Mirror castle. It’s dated October 1969. Darren suggests his mother doesn’t look five months pregnant. Maybe she wasn’t?
BLACK MIRROR II ♦ WALKTHROUGH ♦ CHAPTER 1 ♦ CHAPTER 2 ♦ CHAPTER 3 ♦ CHAPTER 4 ♦ CHAPTER 5 ♦ CHAPTER 6 ♦ PUZZLES ♦ SCREENSHOTS ♦ DIARY