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Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 10:44:59 -0500
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: trivial puzzle
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Przemyslaw Wstrzemiezliwy wrote:

> Here's the puzzle
> The player must get a key that is lying on a cabinet that is considerably
> higher than the PC. The PC can not reach the key unless he moves a chair
> next to the cabinet (the chairs initial position is next to a desk) and
> stands on it. Only then will the key become visible, and 'getable'.
> Would you find such a puzzle enjoyable or just tedious and trivial?

Personal, biased opinion?  I can definitively say that I can't directly say.
What I mean is that it depends on the setup.

Like any puzzle, it can range from the trivial and amusing (example:  the
first thing you do in the game is "move" something, then you're told about
the movable chair and that you can't see the top of the cabinet) to the
tedious and trivial (example:  the game tells me that I could probably see
something if I move the chair) to the tedious and very non-trivial (example:
I'm left in a room, and I'm told that there's a desk, a chair, and a cabinet;
and the door is locked--I now have no clue what to do).

My experience has been that the complexity and difficulty of a puzzle is
directly related to how it fits into the plot.  If it's something you've had
to do elsewhere in the game, the puzzle becomes less complex ("easier" in
that there are fewer steps to "guess").  If it's something that the game text
tries to point you toward, then the puzzle becomes less difficult ("easier"
in the sense that each step requires less creativity to "guess").

Each game sort of has its own "balance point" for these ideas, and each game
designer chooses his or her own.

Note, incidentally, that Infocom got around this often by "hiding" a very
similar puzzle in their sample transcripts...


