Support NeoGAF

[MichaelFassbender]

This thing from Phantasmagoria 2:

I don't know if I was too young or dumb but this took me like a month to solve.

No, it's a genuinely hard thing to get done, even with the solution. So pat yourself on the back!

 

[Fonds]

Naw, that was great! The Dig was awesome and had nice puzzle variations.

LucasArts adventures always had a great flow to them.

Runaway on the other hand, had you doing stuff that didn't work at first, but upon returning later the stuff you couldn't do before now somehow works...

That ladies and gentlemen, is piss-poor adventure design.

 

[Karsha]

Isn't the "goat" puzzle in broken sword famous because it was bugged and sometimes you'd get stuck there? Because the puzzle itself was pretty easy if i recall.

 

[maxcriden]

I had way more trouble on that puzzle than the final one.

That's reassuring. Thank you!

 

[manueldelalas]

Yes, most adventure games I've played have at least one bullshit puzzle. I remember being stuck for WEEKS on the Monkey Island one.

People need to play McPixel, an indie game with only bullshit puzzles, very fun.

 

[Finaika]

I stopped playing the game after I encountered this.

And I was enjoying the game too

 

[Fonds]

Only a very small picture... but if you've played it, you'll remember.

The dreaded tree pump in the petrified forest of Grim Fandango.

 

[halfbeast]

although not hard to figure out, since it was at the very beginning (and you had only a couple of items to trial and error), getting your rat to fetch you your wallet underneath the couch is probably the LAZIEST puzzle design and a warning of what crap you have to deal with in the rest of the game.

I'm looking at you Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Bullshit!

 

[Zukuu]

That mofo puzzle me costed hours of my life time...

Spoiler

you have to fucking close the door and take the keys that are in the lock..

. >_>

 

[Drac84]

Came here for BS Goat and Fossil from The Dig, wasn't disappointed. I had a spot of bother with the following puzzles:

Normality; one of the first puzzles involving a toy and a remote (can't remember specifics)
Broken Sword 5; the seagull
The Dig; getting the lens
Kingdom O' Magic; using a caged child to consume gingerbread men.
Curse of Monkey Island; clicking on the banjo case.

And while not technically an Adventure game, no discussion on bullshit puzzles would be complete without this monstrosity from Professor Layton:

 

[Narroo]

Came here for BS Goat and Fossil from The Dig, wasn't disappointed. I had a spot of bother with the following puzzles:

Normality; one of the first puzzles involving a toy and a remote (can't remember specifics)
Broken Sword 5; the seagull
The Dig; getting the lens
Kingdom O' Magic; using a caged child to consume gingerbread men.
Curse of Monkey Island; clicking on the banjo case.

And while not technically an Adventure game, no discussion on bullshit puzzles would be complete without this monstrosity from Professor Layton:

Ugh, that thing. I believe that is the only puzzle in the game where you can interact with the background like that.

 

[Mistle]

This stupid thing from Monkey Island 2.

I like this one. Classic "think outside the box" puzzle. (if i'm remembering correctly... you have to move the flags, no? not actually spit far?)

On second thought, now I'm remembering drinking something to thicken up spit and also wind speed. I'm confused, haha

 

[someguyinahat]

That mofo puzzle me costed hours of my life time...

Spoiler

you have to fucking close the door and take the keys that are in the lock..

. >_>

Did anyone else read the spoiler and think, "Looks like SOMEONE never played Riven?" No? Just me?

 

[weemadarthur]

I tried to play one of the King's Quest games, dunno which. It had a puzzle where you walk into one screen, and a dog is chasing a cat. They run off screen as soon as you enter. Apparently, you were supposed to throw a boot at them so the dog would leave off chasing the cat. I never attempted it, and got nowhere in the game. I still don't care for the idea of using animal abuse, even if mild, to solve a puzzle.

And I only know this from reading a walkthrough years later.

 

[jblank83]

The germ game from the 7th guest.
The game didn't really have items, just puzzles.

This one was basically othello, but against an unbeatable A.I. I think they eventually nerfed it, but holy hell.

Came to post this.

 

[TheMink]

Megaman battle network 5 for me, that puzzle where you have to figure out a numerical code based on his sentence. I remember asking my entire family for help and none of us solved it.

Edit:
Oops not adventure

 

[Zaku]

Megaman battle network 5 for me, that puzzle where you have to figure out a numerical code based on his sentence. I remember asking my entire family for help and none of us solved it.

Edit:
Oops not adventure

While we're on the topic...

The Treasure Sword dungeon in Lufia 2. I've beaten the game about six times by now, and still that one freaking puzzle will baffle me to this day.

 

[Chev]

I like this one. Classic "think outside the box" puzzle. (if i'm remembering correctly... you have to move the flags, no? not actually spit far?)

On second thought, now I'm remembering drinking something to thicken up spit and also wind speed. I'm confused, haha

You have to do three things, move the flags, thicken your spit (the process of which you already know at that point as how to do it is pointed out in the previous chapter) and wait for the wind. The wind was the hardest thing for me, especially since I got it right by luck on the first attempt in my original playthrough so for subsequent ones when just spitting didn't work I was left dumbfounded.

That mofo puzzle me costed hours of my life time...

Spoiler

you have to fucking close the door and take the keys that are in the lock..

. >_>

That one isn't bullshit, it's genius, especially in how it bets that LucasArt games players only open doors and never close them unless they've already played MI2 (in which a similar puzzle was used). Any puzzle that can be solved by using the default action (and "close" is indeed the default action for all open doors) yet still manages to be hard for most players is marvelous.

 

[Hammer24]

Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The fucking Babelfish vending machine at the start, goddamned cockblocked me for a damn sight longer than I'll ever fully admit to myself.

Grrrr.

This darn thing took my hours. But for some odd reason it didn´t feel frustrating.

 

[Lurch666]

I like this one. Classic "think outside the box" puzzle. (if i'm remembering correctly... you have to move the flags, no? not actually spit far?)

On second thought, now I'm remembering drinking something to thicken up spit and also wind speed. I'm confused, haha

I remember that one.You have to do all three tings to win.Each time you figured one out you would get a bit closer to winning.

Both monkey islands stumped me at one point.

The magnet to get lechucks key in the first one

Spoiler

(you had to look at a compass in your inventory to find out it was magnetic)

and the monkey wrench in the second one

Spoiler

but not where to use it it was the damn banana on the metronome bit.

 

[gelf]

That mofo puzzle me costed hours of my life time...

Spoiler

you have to fucking close the door and take the keys that are in the lock..

. >_>

I don't mind puzzles that take hours to figure out but I can't stand things like this which I feel are just an extension of pixel hunting.

 

[Fliesen]

The monkey wrench one in Monkey Island was pretty bad.

you know what's even worse - that "pun" doesn't even work out in the german version of the game, which is why the localization team wanted to replace the monkey with a stereotyipical Englishman (as an "Engländer" is pretty much the nickname of the equivalent of a monkey wrench.) but you couldn't hypnotize an englishman with a banana, so they just gave up.

 

[synce]

One of the solutions in Deponia involved putting a cat in a tree.

 

[Kageshinzo]

the goat of bullshit adventure game puzzles

I never had any problems with this one; I'm surprised people are saying it.

That monkey wrench in Monkey Island, however, is just :|.

Why did I ever like Adventure Games in the first place....

Because when you solve the puzzle/s and advance the story, you feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction? I know I do.

That having been said, I am playing through Broken Sword II right now and the first part where I got stuck was due to me not checking the items in my inventory. I guess that's my fault though.

 

[Liamario]

In my experience, puzzles in video games only tend to fall apart when the rules and boundaries of the game aren't clearly defined. Things that would be seen to be obvious aren't so, because you can't possibly know how much you're able to interact with the world.

 

[halfbeast]

I like this one. Classic "think outside the box" puzzle. (if i'm remembering correctly... you have to move the flags, no? not actually spit far?)

On second thought, now I'm remembering drinking something to thicken up spit and also wind speed. I'm confused, haha

ugh, even though I play the game once a year I keep forgetting one of the pieces of this puzzle.

Spoiler

you have to blow the horn, move the flags, take a sip of both the yellow and blue drink and then spit when the wind's blowing. I hate that puzzle...

 

[protonion]

Never got that far myself but apparently there was a puzzle in the first diskworld game involving catching a butterfly that was way obscure.

Anyone remember that one?

Ah yes. The butterfly was over a sleeping guy and his snoring pushed it away. You had to use a frog to shut his mouth! I don't know if this is a joke in the books. I've read just 5 so far.

My vote goes to the cemetery puzzle in Gabriel Knight. You had to write a message for someone to read. Iirc there was one way to write it. How could anyone figure it out. The cd version included the solution I think.

 

[protomouse]

Cat hair moustache from Gabriel Knight 3.

Just had to look this up and...

 

[mclem]

The germ game from the 7th guest.
The game didn't really have items, just puzzles.

This one was basically othello, but against an unbeatable A.I. I think they eventually nerfed it, but holy hell.

The problem here was that - IIRC - the AI had a fixed thinking time, and would look for the best move it could in the time available. Which was fine at first release... but then computers got faster and faster, the AI could explore more of the solution space, and eventually it became unrealistic to beat it. So I'd say that's a bug, rather than a poorly-designed puzzle as such.


While I'm not a fan of the 'separated pieces of information' problem like in the rumplestiltskin example (It's okay in principle, but you absolutely need to establish a way that a player can bridge a mental link between the problem and the necessary information. I've often cited a puzzle from Curses - a book by Marie Swelldon - as one of my favourite puzzles, because the mental link springs up naturally if you consider the situation carefully. That's doing that sort of problem *right*), it's not what I think is the worst crime in adventure puzzles.

That accolade, I think, goes to puzzles where the player is left not understanding *why* a puzzle works after it's been solved. Now, there is a catch, here - sometimes the player is just, well, not very good at puzzle-solving. But there's absolutely a point of no return. And the worst offender on that front? The Quantum Weather Butterfly in the first Discworld game.

(I'm going to spoil the entire puzzle here, becase both the key aspects *are* clued, but I think the cause-and-effect isn't clear).

Spoiler

You need to catch a butterfly. That's okay, there's one existing yesterday (that you can travel to... it's a long story) in the park, that happens to be fluttering above a sleeping, well, you-from-the-past.

You have a butterfly net. And you can't catch the butterfly. And it's not clear why you can't catch it.

Crime 1: If a player is on the right track, make sure they're both aware of the fact, and why that's not working yet.

Spoiler

The problem - which the game doesn't tell you - is that the you-from-the-past's snoring is scaring the butterfly. Or possibly blowing it around. The game isn't really conveying that; could be either. The point is that you are the problem, here.

So, you need to stop you-from-the-past snoring.


Now, we need to go back to an *earlier* puzzle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMXJaQeWfJ8&feature=player_detailpage#t=30

Here you had to open the gate. And you attempt, and the spell backfires and hits you - and in turn, that causes you to spit out a frog. This is very important information, and it only happens once in the game.

Crime 2: If something is important, give the player a fair shot to *realise* that it is so.

Spoiler

While I'm just about okay with only telling people important information once, I'm not okay with making it look like a throwaway gag, which this absolutely *does* look like (compare with the 'localised rainstorm' gag, which - IIRC - is simply a throwaway gag. Despite actually making some sense with the goal of this puzzle.)

Now, I - and many other people - would have assumed that that's a jokey spell backfiring, and the spell creates the frog. Certainly, that's the only implication that's given in the game.

Crime 3: Make sure necessary information is unambiguous.

Spoiler

The implication I took from it is incorrect - The frog was *already* in your throat. And it's what you need to bung up you-from-the-pasts mouth, avoiding a time paradox. Well, except the question of where the frog came from, but we won't ask about that....

Three crimes which go towards making a puzzle that could be pretty great actually rather more difficult than it ought to be.

Edit: Oh, there's a fourth crime, too: I don't think the cause-and-effect of *using* the butterfly is apparent. Trying to remember if it was reasonably clued.

 

[mclem]

Regarding the Monkey Wrench puzzle: I've commented previously on a similarly region-specific puzzle from Zork II:

For a similar culprit, there's a nasty puzzle in Zork II that's a bit too American; the "Oddly-angled room"

Oddly-Angled Room:
This is a room with oddly angled walls and passages in all directions. The walls are made of some glassy substance.
On the floor is a very small diamond shaped window which is flickering dimly.
A long wooden club lies on the ground near the diamond-shaped window. The club is curiously burned at the thick end.
>Examine club
The words "Babe Flathead" are burned into the wood.

(As a little context, the "Flathead" family are the ruling family in Zork, and the name crops up all over the place. That aspect is not relevant to the puzzle.)

Now, this is a maze; in text adventure terms, that's a series of locations which look fundamentally identical, with non-euclidean connections between them - i.e., going east then west does not necessarily place you back at the first location. For a traditional text adventure maze you'd want to find some means of distinguishing between the locations and then map the non-euclidean connections by constructing a connection table *or* you find a clue in the room that indicates the next direction you should travel.

I have given you all the information the game gives you to determine the means of solving the maze, other than any feedback you get from experimentation. One nasty tweak of this one: Not only are the connections non-euclidean, they are also inconsistent. Going East from one room at one point will not necessarily put you in the same location if you do it at a later point.

Infocom created their invisiclues hintbooks which have been variously ported to more modern sources. Here's the Invisiclues page for the Oddly-angled room. Note that two of the clues on the page are not relevant - the one about the convention of wizards is a red herring, and the one about the glowing sword is more about the game in general rather than this room in particular.

 

[jgminto]

This thing from Phantasmagoria 2:

I don't know if I was too young or dumb but this took me like a month to solve.

All of the alien world puzzles were pretty frustrating. It literally comes down to combining everything with everything because you have no reference for what these things are supposed to be. The rest of the game was pretty fantastic, it wasn't really a puzzle intensive game for the most part though.

 

[Kelas]

Another Broken Sword series one for me, this one from 2. Not sure it was especially difficult for everyone, but I was stuck on this for a LONG time, before having to look it up in school (I had no internet).

I can't remember the exact scenario, but it was from the film set bit and you had to throw a bun into a bush to aggravate some hornets. It's just something I never tried or would have tried if I didn't look it up.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

"Hush Puppies" in Simon the Sorcerer 2

 

[mclem]

Monkey Kombat... the worst ever.

This is a good example of a bad puzzle.

The basic premise isn't a million miles away from Insult Swordfighting - use basic encounters to accumulate information, and then make use of that information to win encounters in a scissors-paper-stone format. The heart of the puzzle isn't too bad.

The problem is that you need a ridiculous amount of work to painstakingly map out the solution space - which is random when you start the game, so you can't just copy someone else's solution. That said, there are aspects that reduce the solution space, but I don't *think* they're apparent at the outset (can someone clarify?)

 

[tkscz]

In my experience, puzzles in video games only tend to fall apart when the rules and boundaries of the game aren't clearly defined. Things that would be seen to be obvious aren't so, because you can't possibly know how much you're able to interact with the world.

It's like I'm the only one on the internet who didn't get confused by this as a kid. I mean, it was going up and down and Sonic would stand perfectly still on it. Pressing up and down as it went up and down just seemed obvious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCiMmja7qis

The NeverHood had a lot of difficult puzzles, but screw the mouse puzzle. Seriously, hated that puzzle so much.

 

[Vanishing Avatar]

Monkey Kombat... the worst ever.

It would have been better with fewer stances to learn,but I didn't think it was that bad... until the final fight.

Spoiler

The enemy's health regenerates far faster than you can harm him. The only way to beat him is by drawing 3 times, which annoys him, amking him drop Elaine. Fortunately, just inputting random stances will make you do this by accident eventually.

 

[dalekjay]

A cool one is The ending of monkey island 2, in the end there's a series of puzzles that you receive key for each...

Spoiler

but don't matter how much you search, you will never find, just ignore the puzzles and go through the dog door

 

[mclem]

Megaman battle network 5 for me, that puzzle where you have to figure out a numerical code based on his sentence. I remember asking my entire family for help and none of us solved it.

Edit:
Oops not adventure

To be fair, while it's not an adventure game, I think that counts as an adventure game puzzle - it wouldn't necessarily be out of place in such a game.

 

[Cave Johnson]

I just finished this game a few hours ago. Fuck this puzzle, it just threw on a loop! There's no cipher to determine which ingredients goes where. A cup of "Love" a tablespoon of "romance", I mean, WTF?

But the worst part is that even if you did it correctly, it won't work until you do it again. The hell is that all about?

Developers, abstract, nonsensical puzzles is not something you truly feel rewarded from.

 

[Mr_Zombie]

Cat hair moustache from Gabriel Knight 3.

I know this is refered as the puzzle that killed point & click adventure games (although it's unfair given that GK3 also had Le Serpent Rouge - the biggest and best puzzle ever), but somehow I solved it without any solution. It was weird and illogical at first, but it was a perfectly solvable puzzle.

I remember reading that this puzzle is bad because it was simply thrown there at last minute.

damn, I almost want to play that game now.

Do it. As XiaNaphryz said, it's basically "The Da Vinci Code" of video games, but with better storyline (even though the game contains supernatural characters, the plot seemed more logical to me than Brown's book's did) and better characters.

The Dig had a great set of puzzles and this one was pretty easy. My only issue with it was that you could put all the bones in place, and they fit, and still not get it right. On my first few tries I kept confusing the top of the turtle with the bottom. >_>

 

[CarlieCaplin]

ugh, even though I play the game once a year I keep forgetting one of the pieces of this puzzle.

Spoiler

you have to blow the horn, move the flags, take a sip of both the yellow and blue drink and then spit when the wind's blowing. I hate that puzzle...

WHAT? That's the solution?
I started playing MI2 twice (on PC and iOS) and stopped both times at this point.

 

[The Technomancer]

I would have said the Marble Press puzzle from Riven but I watched someone play it for the first time recently and if your taking good notes like you should in a myst game the game gives you most of the connections pretty implicitly. The biggest mental leap is making the connection between the press and

Spoiler

the imager on the other island

The real bullshit puzzle in that game is the animal combination to get into the rebel age. People dont talk about it but the mental leaps required there are ridiculous

 

[Currygan]

I mean, WTH

 

[The Technomancer]

^hah

 

[AlterOdin]

The Ripper crystal constellation puzzle; even though you figure out what to do, placing the crystals in the right position to represent the constellation was almost impossible.

Also the ripper library password puzzle, when something about having perfect eyesight represented 2020 vision in the password.

Man playing Ripper back in the day without internet was hard

 

[Chev]

It would have been better with fewer stances to learn,but I didn't think it was that bad...

It was bad because to win at it you had to memorize/write down a lot of abstract things and they were randomized on each playthrough, whereas in previous games anything you needed to memorize would be written down for you (making the puzzle about how to use the information you have rather than just memorizing it) and the insults were designed as both entertaining and intuitive.

I mean, WTH

I rank this one as one of the top game puzzles, actually. It's just up to you to investigate and use all the available clues to figure it out. Unlike the puzzles of the first game there's nothing abstract about it, you're "simply" required to operate a machine without having the manual, and to do that you have to understand the whole island surrounding it.

 

[jay]

Discworld stuff

I found a lot of Discworld to be impenetrable, but I really liked the setting and characters (I played it before I read any of the books). So I just played through the whole game with a walkthrough to enjoy the dialog and story and it was worth it, except for the brutal PS1 loading times.

You are right, though, even after finishing it with the answers in hand, I didn't understand how some of the solutions actually solved puzzles.

Was the second game any better as an actual game?

 

[Firebrand]

I found a lot of Discworld to be impenetrable, but I really liked the setting and characters (I played it before I read any of the books). So I just played through the whole game with a walkthrough to enjoy the dialog and story and it was worth it, except for the brutal PS1 loading times.

You are right, though, even after finishing it with the answers in hand, I didn't understand how some of the solutions actually solved puzzles.

Was the second game any better as an actual game?

Yes, it was alright. The blurb on the back cover by Pratchett specifically mentions making the puzzles less convoluted.

 

[Altairre]

Monkey Kombat... the worst ever.

Oh god I remember this part and all the notes I made to get through it. It's so tedious and the last fight is bullshit.

 

[maxcriden]

And while not technically an Adventure game, no discussion on bullshit puzzles would be complete without this monstrosity from Professor Layton:

OMG thank you! I always post this, haha.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=116196221&postcount=18