"Coat it, Cake my brain with your lies, My demeanor may sway, But you'll never twist it" ― Description of By The Hour
By The Hour is a game popular among hunters for its difficulty and uniqueness with the gameplay and storytelling. This is the main game for WaningLucidity and tells the story about him slowly becoming insane after losing employment and his work.
Overview[]
By The Hour is a game created by WaningLucidity that goes through the story of him being fired from his job as a font designer under Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. The game uses a multitude of mechanics from click-triggers to searching for answers on separate sites on the Internet.
It begins inside a seemingly abandoned clock tower where Waning is staying after losing his job and then depicts his obsession with his own workout that eventually turns into anger after discovering that his work was stolen. The player goes through WaningLucidity's experiences with schizophrenia which eventually drives him to kill Herman Zapf, the one responsible. After trying to run away from his crimes, he is caught and put into solitary where he concludes by ending his own life.
Walkthrough[]
Once the player spawns into the game, they will be inside a rundown clock tower. Around the place are many objects with labels that appear when hovering over them with their mouse, more notably is fan art of Waning and a trophy to the contest winner. On the walls are four clocks all telling different times. Under the broken ladder is a note which gives directions to solve a puzzle involving math. The player must look at the two numbers on each clock and divide them by the big hand over the small hand. The quotients then need to be added up to get the answer of 17.417. After putting the answer through the chat, the player will be teleported to "the little undulations".
Here, they must quickly react as the room is beginning to rise with water. A cork can be found behind a generator in the room and the player will die if it is not found in time. The game seems to take place in a break room that seems to be altered to be quite dark and gloomy. A few interactable objects can be clicked around the room, with the most important being a fuse box and valve. The player will have to go around the room to find two fuses, one on top of a table and the other behind some sort of tomb, in order to turn the valve. This will then open a door to a garbage chute that they can fall down in. At the bottom, they will be met with two papers and two small vents. One of them by a note can be taken off and climbed through to teleport to "climb out, back to the soil". The other will jumpscare the player with an extremely loud sound.
The player will spawn in some abstract world where they begin inside some building. Their inventory should consist of a torch that they can use to light up the surrounding atmosphere. Stepping outside will cause the hint GUI to read, "watching from above, two upwards of, where you stand, once you are done, find the icon". This is referring to the second window above the doorway where the player can angle their camera right to find something to click. After clicking it, they should rush back inside the house because lasers will be activated which are lethal. To get past these, the player will have to walk through them when they're red and stop in between when purple. Keep in mind there is an idle animation. Next, they can walk up the first four steps of the staircase to the next platform, but then jump over the rest because they are non-collidable.
The area that needs to be clicked for the code in "climb out, back to the soil".
This platform has a few odd structures around with seemingly no way to progress, however, the player can find a click trigger near the top of the back left corner of the tent-like structure on the left. The block that needs to be clicked is also shaded in a darker color than the surrounding studs. Once clicked, new messages will show in the hint GUI and a bridge connected to another platform will be made. From here, the player will need to find the end of the pillar-like structure with holes while viewing it from the right. The objective is to find another click trigger that will kick them but leave them a hint. After returning back to the same point, they should stand on the pedestal and say, "Icon Star Arrow". Colors around the player will become bright and inverted, so they must equip the torch a few times until they are teleported to "thieves".
Ahead of the player should now be a tower of desks with Waning's boss' face printed on the side of it. At the desk, clicking the bottom drawer will splat a decal on the screen, referring to someone as "him". This combined with googling "RQEN bagenov" should give the idea that Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes are involved. Saying "Bigelow" in the chat will open this draw which will then also let the player click the final newspaper in the game to move forwards. The newspaper is located on one of the desks on the stack. Once doing this, more dialogue will appear, and afterward, a red patch of light will appear on the floor, moving in a circular direction. Touching this patch will teleport them to the 5th game, "interlude".
What is assumed to be Waning inside Zapf's home, ready to kill him in his sleep.
The next game interlude simply requires the player to walk forward to another red patch moving in a circular motion. Dialogue is played while they progress, and at the end, they will need to touch another red patch to get to ""the arrow writhes in the icon's grip". This one takes place in a voxel-type place with a few trees and a wooden stump. To enter the stump, the player has to find four triggers, two clickable and two touchable. The first click is on the roof of the stump towards the front right corner, and the second is on top of the hedges near spawn. It can be accessed by standing on the top of the stump. The touch triggers both require some parkour skill to it. The first is on the tree at the far right back of the map. The player will need to jump from the stump and onto a second tree to reach the trigger. Once on the tree in the far right, the player should jump and they'll have the first trigger. The second touch trigger can be found in the opposite corner of the map. The player will notice transparent blocks on the near left corner from spawn. The player should jump from each transparent platform until they reach the nearest tree. The touch trigger will be on the top of the tree.
Once these are all found, the player may enter the stump. Clicking the weird-looking stick figure on the bed will freeze the player for a while whilst demonic laughter plays. Eventually, a scream is heard and the player is able to move again. The badge "death of an icon" is also granted to the player. Attempting to walk back out of the stump will result in another teleport to "slunk back", the 7th game. The player is brought to a road where flashing blue and red lights chase them, which seem to be police. No matter what the player does, they are caught by them and teleported again to "float".
This game has a straightforward concept. Click the stairs in the corner of the jail cell to move them next to the pole, and then the rope in the other corner. The player's screen will fade to black and audio will be played of someone hanging themselves along with someone frantically trying to open a door. This is assumed to be the current end of By The Hour.
History[]
By The Hour was created on 1/3/2021 and was last updated on 7/28/2021. It received lots of recognition a few months after its creation from many myth hunters, but would, unfortunately, stay at a somewhat low visit count. On May 3rd, 2021, WaningLucidity hosted an event in his Discord server related to By The Hour. It was a contest of who could reach the furthest in it, as nobody had completed the game at the time. It ended on May 18th with THEpeoplewhoSEES being in the first place and he received a trophy in an update to By The Hour.
In late December 2021, Waning began planning a revamp for By The Hour where he had made the game private for the next four months. The game apparently went through some rather slow development but was eventually fully revamped on March 27th, 2022. It quickly gained loads of attention and the game was recognized as a much more established myth game. On November 26th, an additional badge was added under the game to signify a secret ending.
Trivia[]
- By The Hour was inspired by the books, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, during the original version.
- Some of Waning’s close friends helped him with developing some things in by the hour, the most notable being the popular myth hunter, THEpeoplewhoSEES.
- Despite having over thousands of visits, only a handful of people have gotten both "the death of an icon" badge, and "quite yielding". Even fewer have obtained the newly added badge, "(clozapine)".
- The revamp of the game has been nerfed considerably since release, being far more difficult and likely barely possible pre-nerf. However, most hunters agree that the revamp also brought better quality to the game all-around.
Theories[]
- The various different styles throughout the game are showcasing Waning's descent into madness and worsening schizophrenia.
- The first and second game stay consistent to the original style yet the third switches drastically. The fourth goes back, the fifth changed yet again and the last three are completely different from each other.
- The particularly eventful events of Waning's progression through the game are usually the most abstract, likely showing that the more impactful an event is, the worse his schizophrenia gets and it may be his worsening schizophrenia that makes these events more impactful.
- Waning gives in to his intense schizophrenia midway through the game.
- The first three games may showcase Waning fighting his ever-worsening schizophrenia, climaxing at the third game where it begins to win.
- The fourth game, where he finds out about Hermann Zapf stealing his work, is where he begins to listen to what his illness is telling him (likely to kill Zapf).
- The games up to the murder of Zapf show the better side of his brain questioning himself, and then choosing to continue either way. This is where the schizophrenia has made Waning give in to the delusions. The games also begin to calm down from this point onwards, which may be Waning showing less resistance.
Gallery[]
