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From: sxl6400@hertz.njit.edu (Mike Threepoint)
Subject: Re: Above all, pamper the player
Message-ID: <1994Oct24.063404.10095@njitgw.njit.edu>
Summary: 7th Guest's maze is one of the worst
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Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 06:34:04 GMT
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The Felix Lee writes!
> The most boring and tedious maze I ever encountered was the maze in
> The 7th Guest.  It was way too large to be effective in any sense.
> It's a simple rectangular loop-free maze, solvable with the right-hand
> rule.  It was randomly generated, so you couldn't really solve it any
> other way.

> Every time you hit a dead end it would play a chilling chord and a
> voice would mock, "Getting .... Lonely?"  It's fine once or twice;
> silly after the third or fourth time.  But you get to hear it dozens,
> maybe hundreds of times.  At that point, it's just annoying and
> stupid.  The atmosphere of the game is completely destroyed.

Tracking up and down all those corridors step by step takes long
enough, and most of the corridors are long and fold back on themselves
two or three times between intersections, which can take as long as
thirty seconds of rat's eye view of the maze.  And then, the first
note of the dreaded dead end sequence...

Dreaded, not because it was scary, but because it takes about ten
seconds for "panic" music to jangle along as the view tracks down
every last step to the stone wall at the end of the corridor and to
listen to Stauf mock once again, "Feeeeling... _looonely_?".  And then
the hike back to the last wrong turn.

Tedious?  It was absolutely obnoxious.  And deliberately so.

The minute I encountered the maze, I immediately started solving it
with the right hand rule (follow the wall by your right hand, and
you'll never return to the same dead end twice).  After the third time
I ran into the dead end, I was getting impatient waiting for the game
to continue, and thinking "Is that all you can say?".  About the fifth
time, I was wondering how many times I was going to have to sit
through this, and I had taken to talking to my screen, "No, actually,
I'm feeling annoyed, Stauf."  By the tenth time, I wondered how many
times I was going to have to listen to the same damn interminable
music and wait for Stauf to say his stupid line so I can turn around
and get back to the last intersection already! 

Fortunately, it only took around three quarters of an hour and about
sixteen dead ends following the right hand wall.  It could have taken
over five times as many following the left wall.

It was even more tedious than mapping that T-Zero maze where
directions you can go are conditional on what direction you entered a
room from.

The Essential Addition writes!
> I just hope that you all aren't objecting to all mazes (and some of you 
> certainly are giving the impression that any collection of six rooms or 
> more with multiple exits is sinful) because of your dislike of that one 
> overdone type.  If you are, then you're much too impatient.  After all, 
> let's take the person who was talking about the 7th Guest maze.  How did 
> it make you feel when you discovered that the maze's solution was always 
> available to you?  Makes the maze a bit easier, doesn't it?

Let me see if I can describe my feelings at that moment.  First, the
"aha!".  Then the checking it against my sketchily drawn map of
turns.  A brief sinking feeling and disappointment.  Finally replaced
by some satisfaction in knowing I'd never have to systematically
explore that annoying maze again.  The game had vindicated itself a
little.

> So is it the game's fault or yours?

The game's.  The maze is just too damn slow, and deliberately grates
on your nerves.

Yes, there's a map to the maze.  But there's no reason to expect one.
The game has other tiresome puzzles, including several where a slip of
the mouse means you have to start all over again.  Playing Simon on
the piano keyboard, for example.
