There are some similarities between the two games. Both involve objects traversing an environment from an origin to a destination. But where the puzzler has you manipulating the environment, this one has you manipulating the object, and occasionally losing - or relinquishing - control of it. (There are some levels where you need to deliberately curl up in order to roll yourself through a section you couldn't have successfully navigated in uncurled form.)

...

After a few more levels, the Typhon begins helping. It takes noticeably more losses for it to begin assisting than the last game, but it does start helping get the armadillo across the map.

She says thank you whenever it helps her. It probably doesn't know what she means, but - she knows what she means, and she wants to say it.

When the armadillo has made it to the edge of the woods and is peering suspiciously through the trees at the first obstacle of the first forest level, she saves the game and gets up to resume exploring.

The city's got lots of Typhon to eat! Her Typhon resumes eating mimics that she points out, leaving her awake while it does it. It goes after the muttering ones, too, but it doesn't keep her awake for any of those.

If she seems to want to get past locked doors, it'll get them open for her. Usually, this means it'll use its shapeshifting powers to create key facsimiles out of its limbs, but at one point it's confronted with a door that has a digital lock. It stares at it for a few thoughtful minutes. Then it slices through the door's deadbolt with a razor sharp tendril and kicks it in, as if this was the most natural solution in the world.

Lauren gets in the habit of thanking it for doing helpful things.

...when it solves the digital lock, she giggles.

It doesn't start solving all locked doors with this method, even when it would obviously be faster. It fiddles with the lock and carefully makes key facsimiles; it gets pretty good at it.

"You're a problem solver, aren't you," she muses after yet another unlocked door. "I wonder if you're as curious about me as I am about you."

Predictably, it doesn't answer.

But it does let her keep doing whatever she wants, eating its kin along the way. It stops devouring mimics whole, instead draining them of something, compacting whatever's left over, and then carelessly dropping small, dense husks of once-mimic onto the ground without ceremony. It's not really clear what it's getting out of this, but it is just as happy to eat more Typhon.

That's weird. She wonders what changed. It's kind of hard to tell, with her new friend still firmly nonverbal.

It doesn't switch back to eating mimics whole. It's hard to tell if it's switched to only mostly eating the muttering ones, since it's in the habit of not having those confrontations in front of her. If she investigates the remains, they're also small and dense husks of once-Typhon.

There's a faint sound of thunder, in the distance.

Her Typhon assumes control and turns to look in the direction the thunder came from suspiciously, as if assessing this alarming sound for threats. It stands perfectly still, searching the sky with expressionless intensity without even breathing. A raindrop impacts the top of the Typhon's head. It twitches, then retreats under an awning to crouch in a small out of the way corner where it can stare with suspicion at this strange new phenomenon. More raindrops follow the first.

It stares at the weather for another few seconds, pokes its head out to search the sky again, and then it hesitantly returns control when it finds no obvious threats.

"...are you scared of thunderstorms? Well, I guess if they don't have weather where you come from..."

A flash of lightning lights up the sky, followed by a peal of thunder. Her Typhon twitches again, then... thoughtfully looks at where lightning flashed in the sky. After a pause, it reaches out a hand to feel the rain. Contemplatively, it looks at the droplets on their skin. For a few seconds it stands there.

Then it turns, delicately breaks a nearby window, and hops inside with a sense of urgency and purpose it hasn't exhibited before. Its eyes flick around the room, and rest upon a power outlet. Lauren's arm shifts to a black tendril as it slides forward and kneels beside the outlet. The reason why becomes apparent when it inserts the limb into the socket. The limb tingles a little, but there's no jolting shock, and it's very clear that her Typhon knows precisely what it's doing.

Interestingly, it keeps Lauren awake while it does this. She's even able to talk.

"Oh. Of course you can just drink from a power outlet. I can't imagine why I didn't think of that. But what are you up to?"

No answer. Instead: slurp slurp slurp, delicious electricity. That's probably not a surprise.

When her Typhon is done, it retracts the tendril, hops out of the broken window, and promptly goes full Typhon. It's - unsettling. Not painful, but it's like Lauren is made out of water, or perhaps animated sand and ever-shifting elastic, moving and rearranging itself to suit its own needs. It keeps a pair of eyes in roughly the same location, and keeps the same number of limbs, but everything else is extremely fluid and mobile. Larger, too. The Typhon appears to have been condensing itself to fit to a more human size. It's not immediately obvious how it managed this without giving it away by the dramatic change in weight.

It travels through the city with a speed that implies that introducing it to a car wouldn't be such a huge upgrade. A car could probably outpace it in a straight race on a large flat surface, but the Typhon is much more mobile. It barely ever touches the ground, using its long stretchy limbs to pull itself and leap from building to building. Clearly it has some kind of destination in mind and has been keeping track of the layout of the city itself, because it doesn't hesitate in its travel. It knows precisely where it's going, and how it's getting there, and it's doing it as quickly as is feasible.

Soon enough, it lands in the middle of a familiar street with ominously flickering street lights. Up ahead was where the metal thing attacked them.

The Typhon deposits her backpack, recondenses and reforms to Lauren's body, and then relinquishes control.

"...are you sure?"

But it's not going to answer her.

She proceeds cautiously forward.

For a little while, all is quiet.

Then - there's the floating metal monstrosity that threatened them before. It looks like it's been having a bit of a bad time in the weather, it's sparking and smoking like a faulty bit of wiring. That's not enough to stop it from eating a delicious human, however, and it turns towards them and makes its synthetic scream and begins to charge -

- and then her Typhon springs its trap.

It waits until the technology-themed Typhon is just close enough, then shifts a limb into a tendril and launches a portion of it at the charging enemy. The bit of tendril then bursts into a large electrical charge. Their enemy screeches and pitches to the side, sparking and fizzing dangerously in the rain. It apparently decides that now it would like to run, but her Typhon doesn't give it the chance.

Lauren's body shifts and she feels herself being launched towards the fleeing enemy -

- and then she is standing in the middle of the street, over a hunk of twisted electronics, black Typhon sludge, and condensed Typhon matter.

"...well. Congratulations."

No answer. But that's hardly a surprise.

The Typhon deposited her backpack a ways away, luckily under an overhang to keep it from getting too wet. Lauren herself is not so lucky, she's a bit soaked. It's an interesting sensation, actually, the rain feels cold, but this is muted and isn't particularly uncomfortable. She herself feels perfectly warm.

She retrieves her backpack, finds somewhere indoors to sit, dries herself off as best she can, and plays a few levels of Alarmadillo while she waits out the rain.

The rain doesn't let up before night falls. Sometime around 2 AM, it finally drizzles itself out. Nothing bothers her during this time. Perhaps the other Typhon are avoiding the rain, the technology Typhon cannibalized its fellows in the area, or none of the other Typhon are willing to brave the horrors of a thunderstorm. Or perhaps something else entirely is going on, it's not really clear.

Her Typhon is strangely unhelpful with Alarmadillo; she gets absolutely no assistance at all, even with the really tricky levels.

Huh. She wonders why. But she suspects she's not going to find out.

Not unless it suddenly starts growing the ability to explain its actions to her with no prior history! It's not looking likely, but aliens ate humanity, so maybe anything is possible.

It leaves her completely alone throughout the night. No Typhon cheat codes for Lauren, apparently.