Community:Defaultio/CONE

CONE is a singleplayer, story-based puzzle adventure game created by. It is a linear storyline divided into six different scenes, in which the player can earn four different badges: WOE, SOLITUDE, LIBERATION, and LAMENTABLE WOE.

CONE is a story-based game using a fixed camera on rails. Players control a traffic cone and maneuver around environments. The player can pick objects up using shift on pc or by the button prompt on other devices, and use these objects to overcome obstacles in the environment or solve puzzles.

The game is riddled with puzzles, and completing them is necessary for moving the story forward.

CONE is the story of a sentient traffic cone who manages to escape the grips of a malicious company by escaping a cone-laying truck as it is moving. By meandering through different environments, and by solving puzzles, the player gains clues as to what is happening to traffic cones, usually in the form of "freedom" triangle symbols plastered on walls. The majority of heavy storytelling is told in the last two chapters, as the player draws near to a suspicious factory.

Before it can enter, the player comes across a strange machine underground, and after learning to reactivate it, the player discovers that the cracked reflective band on the cone was restraining it from moving around and jumping; the crack was the only thing allowing it to move unlike other cones. With the new ability the jump, the player can enter the factory.

The factory confirms all suspicious the player may have had up to this point: Cones in distress are sterilized with gas, fitted with restraining bands, and then packaged to be used for traffic control. The player at this point may have noticed a shiny lever in the factory, supposedly an off-switch to the various mechanisms running the facility.

From here, the player can achieve one of four endings. The most obvious and unavoidable ending is WOE, in which the player falls into the mechanism in an attempt to reach the off switch and is packaged with the rest of the cones.

SOLITUDE is achieved when the player prematurely enters the packaging machine without being banded, returning it to the freeway where it can hop over the guardrails and free itself.

LIBERATION is a complicated achievement in which the player frees all of the cones in the factory. This requires collecting a skull from the forest, sewer, and city, and bringing all of them to a hidden door in one of the city vents. Inside, the player will find a jetpack, which can be used to hop up onto the lever in the factory.

LAMENTABLE WOE is the worst failure possible in the game, achieved when the player falls into the conveyor system with the jetpack on.

CONE uses visual storytelling to convey its plot; there few words that ever appear on screen during the experience.

CONE debuted with mixed ratings, with a like-to-dislike ratio of nearly 50/50. Despite its vastly different approach to forming a story experience, multiple things could have resulted in this, the primary explanation being that a younger playerbase migrating from Defaultio's more popular game, Lumber Tycoon 2, felt unsatisfied with the slow pace of the story or was unable to solve the various puzzles involved. For example, despite surpassing a million visits, very few players managed to reach the WOE ending.

CONE is one of the very few games on Roblox that creates and weaves a story in such a visual, mysterious way. It takes craft and wit to make someone care about a traffic cone, and is something this game executes very well.