Pause Ahead [Walkthrough] - Architect Route

Total Deaths: 15
Total Time: 7:01
0/3 Secrets Collected
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Pause Ahead is a freeware indie jumping-and-pausing platformer from Askiisoft.
Website: www.askiisoft.com/games/pause-ahead/

[@mantisynth2186]

am i the only one wondering about the actual plot of this game? there is obviously something going on... and yet noone even lifts up a finger to think about it...

[@Metaridley17]

I wondered that too.

[@sr.metang8193]

"One gets away, a thousand stay trapped within." "The number 00 is tattooed on my shoulder." "Subject number: 05" (from nihil route) The character is a cloned laboratory rat, basically. The Architect is perhaps, the one testing him... which is implied to be that huge monster, but actually not, instead, being the one watching and recording the player attempts. Or even the player himself is the Architect, since the character is aware he is part of a game after turning on "swag mode". It's on par to Tower of Heaven, and, to some extent, Katana Zero lores, despite having no connection whatso ever. To be fair this is the most confusing out of the three because there is no distinction of the lines, but that's it.

[@momom6197]

@@sr.metang8193 The subject number is the amount of times you've finished the game, a counter that is incremented each time you create a new character. Imo, the thousand who stay trapped within are all the characters whose player gave up, who stopped hoping there'd be cheese at the end of the maze, or found the game too difficult, who didn't play until the escape. The pause messages make a lot of fourth-wall breaking references, so I think it's fair to include the player in the interpretation. Likewise, the nihil ending's achievement being "king of hell", I imagine it means that since the player was so undeterred by the difficulty, driven by it instead, Pauein stays in there forever to engineer the demise of future subjects. It is pretty heavily implied that he won't ever get away and that he replaced the Architect. A big question on my mind is: who is the narrator? At the beginning, it's clearly Pauein's internal monologue. Then, at the transition to the later levels, it seems to switch to some observer, a part of this decaying system who stands between Pauein, the player and the Architect. They are sorrowful about the levels stopping to make sense, which means that they're inside the diegesis rather than outside it like the player of trying to break free from it like Pauein. Likewise, they wouldn't fear the Architect if they were a meta-fictional character. But then, *what* diegetic character are they? We're never shown anyone except Pauein and the Architect. Another possibility is that they stand as a self-insert for the developers, which would explain why they want the game to be beautiful and coherent, inside the meta-narrative where the devs only intended for the initial, straightforward part of the game, which is in line with the demo at least. In the end, it's a very confusing story, but by design. Having to think about a meta-fictional narrative is beyond most casual players anyway, and probably Askiisoft just wanted to make something cool and didn't try too hard to give it a fixed answer. Some things need mystery to remain poetic, which was one of the big lessons of Tower of Heaven imo.

[@Zellig]

Impressive, my attempts took faaaaaar longer.

[@kennethmccormick3350]

i'm stuck on LVL 18