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The Mystery of Time and Space (commonly known as MOTAS) is a popular online graphic adventure game created by Jan Albartus (LOGAN). The game was produced using Macromedia Flash (now Adobe Flash) and was an early influential example of the escape the room genre. For lots of gamers, escapism means starting out in a trap, Toronto Star, January 20, 2008 There are 20 levels of varying length, some consisting of a single room and others consisting of a large network of rooms. Though advertised as a constant work-in-progress with "new levels coming soon," MOTAS has not been updated since May 2008.
The game is currently available in 15 languages, including English language, French language, German language, Japanese, and both traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese. There is also a moderated Chatrooms available for players to discuss the game.
The levels have been noted for their jazz soundtrack, especially the Christmas-themed Level 8 and its jazz representation of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town". Levels 9 and 13 play a MIDI version of "The Way You Look Tonight".
Often, solving one part of the puzzle will reveal items, codes (passwords), or pathways that in turn that help solve another part of the puzzle. The aforementioned cupboard, for example, yields a screwdriver, and the screwdriver is used to unscrew the painting, which yields a screw in return, and so on. The player must often apply lateral thinking when trying to find uses for the items retrieved in order to solve the puzzles. Codes can be in a variety of formats, usually involving simple number sequences but can also be as complex as involving colours, directions and binary numbers; these must be entered into the appropriate elements inside the game's environment correctly in order to advance through the game.
Some of the puzzles may be presented as a single element within the game's environment itself, rather than involving multiple items and elements within the game's environment; these are usually presented in the form of locks preventing access to other elements or pathways. For example, in one of the rooms on the tenth level, the player must unlock a safe by solving a circular, colourful pie chart-like puzzle, through interaction with the elements of the puzzle itself.
Many elements within the game, such as many pieces of furniture and some of the puzzles themselves, can be interacted with without using any additional items. For example, unlocked doors can be opened simply by clicking on them, and some chairs can be moved around by clicking on them.
As the game advances, the gameplay itself steadily evolves at the same time, the levels and puzzles gradually becoming more complex and multi-layered. Levels begin taking place over multiple rooms at once and eventually ventures into an outside world beyond locked buildings. In later levels, the player acquires a device called the Manipulator of Time and Space (MOTAS) device, which takes the player back to previous levels via time travel in order to retrieve items; the player then returns to the current level to solve the puzzles using the items retrieved.
Both possibilities are most strongly hinted at on the sixteenth level. On that level, an encrypted mission report, written by an unknown group of persons aboard an "artificial moon" and left on a computer to be discovered and decrypted by the player, mentions clones being trained in a "Logic Training facility" on the artificial moon along with the discovery of a planet that is named by the writers as "Terra Prime", and is reported as being called Earth by its inhabitants. This strongly suggests that the writers may be extraterrestrial aliens; the report also mentions hostilities from the inhabitants of the planet after the writers' presence in the Solar System was uncovered, and of the measures taken against it by the writers of the report, including the creation of a clone to "hopefully save the planet"; this clone is hinted at the end of the report as being the player.
One plot suggestion has been dismissed though: on the eighth level of the game, a figure in a pink alien suit was shown apparently following the player by exiting one of the two doors inside a room after the player has left the level; this figure was revealed in the seventeenth level to be merely the player themselves, the pink colour explained as the result of an accident while attempting to hide behind the door. The version of the player in the pink suit had travelled from the future using the MOTAS device; the item also helps serve to further the game's elements.
Other elements that serve as plot suggestions include a book named after the game itself, various notes left behind by persons unknown throughout the game (with one reading "No unauthorised time travel"), and the use of portals and teleportation devices to advance between some levels of the game.
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