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> Use soap on dish.
"Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it." -Washington Irving
No, you're talking to fling a light into the future in hopes that some young person down the road trying to build the adventure game that revives the genre sees this video and learns that the secret to a great adventure game isn't the puzzle, but to use the puzzle as a framework to insert story bits, world building, and memorable dialogue.
saying it again my favourite series,
Brilliant game,story,puzzles etc and got my child brain ticking to complete them
The original Resident Evil games have a problem that nobody mentions. The way to solve puzzles there is to use an object on a specific part of the background. The problem is that a lot of the time you can't see which part of the background you're supposed to interact with because of how much the set pieces blend together with the background. This only got worse over time because the better graphics removed the use of bright colors to make them stand out. Silent Hill got away with this by having the character very clearly look in the direction of an object he can interact with and the RE remakes fixed it by having an icon show up.
Ironically I was stuck on the fish bit for ages because I kept putting the spice on the fish in my inventory rather than putting it on the fish in the bucket. I didn't realise that putting the fish in the bucket first meant that an extra fish would stay in my inventory. Bit of a head scratcher
Grim Fandango was the zenith of pointy clicky inventory puzzle games.
Story and gameplay as separate entities? Undercooked concepts and poor game realisation. Devil May Cry 3 having a rival in your brother who is narratively and mechanically superior to you only for both the player and the story to show your growth over him through multiple fights? Sick as fuck, a game designed fully, the pinnacle we should all strive for.
<3
I appreciate the fact that Yahtzee didn't do the sponsorship. Because he absolutely could neither be trusted nor bothered to do it.
And we love him for it.
I think this is accurate and further that it touches on what a lot of AAA games are missing; tying game play to story in a way that makes them inseparable. And having my character shout especially loud at the revenge target when I'm murdering them the same way I've murdered the last 400 people is not the way to do it Assassin's Creed. Even otherwise great developers can fall prey to this; there has only been one side mission in Cyberpunk 2077 that really grabbed me (the one with the Father/Son braindance editors).
Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2 are clever and delightful. Seems like Return to Monkey Island suffered from all the focus being put on “better” graphics, at the cost of clever dialogue and gameplay. I don’t blame the artists or writers though. The dumbing down of Return to Monkey Island smacks of company higher ups dictating game design by committee. Once corporate gets involved with creative decision making, it’s all over. Remember when Comic-Con used to be niche and special, before huge entertainment companies muscled their way in with celebrities in tow? I do. There’s something to be said for remaining small and independent.
I like just watching you go on about stuff. I never played monkey island, so I guess I’m the demographic of viewer you were making this sort of video for.
This is why gatekeeping is important. The more of the "moon logic is bad" people you let contribute, the less the games you like will have those types of puzzles and the more you'll get Red Key Card for the Red Door puzzles.
anyone else thinking about the inflatable duck puzzle from the longest journey? One of my favorite games, but i don't know how anyone got through it before the age of being able to look up walkthroughs on the internet lol
My impression of Monkey Island 2 from a thousand years ago when it was still relatively new was that unlike the first game which was a fun whimsical story with amusing characters and dialogue with some puzzles well integrated in between (most of which were straightforward – one or two were rather oblique), the sequel was MUCH more puzzle-forward. In fact it felt like most of the time you were trying to untangle an absurdly complicated multi-part puzzle and you therefore spent less time enjoying the charisma and wit that you come for with Monkey Island. It was still a good game but nowhere near as dear to my heart.
See the bit as a kid I struggled to work out as a kid was the wind blowing bit. I had no soundcard on my old pc and didn't spot the wind effects, I just kept rerunning the spit competition with different spit dialogue combinations thinking that was the key.. sooner or later I'd just win but it was years before I realised why, just thought the game changed the spit commands each run!
The reason I never massively got into these sort of games, even though in theory they should appeal to me, is not so much that the puzzles were obscure or illogical, but that the games often didn't bother with dedicated "failure" material for when you try something obvious. One that I vaguely remember is in Day of the Tentacle where to get something that's stuck on the ceiling, you have to go to the room above, push a speaker over, turn the music up and the vibration makes it drop? Something like that. But in the real world, you'd just stand on a bloody chair. Now obviously, standing on a chair shouldn't work; but you should be able to try it and it should fail in an interesting, perhaps even hint-ful, way. But obviously that would mean the developers creating maybe a dozen "fail" scenarios for every "success" one, which would push the budget up. So I suppose what I'm saying is, I can't get engaged in these games because they don't let me try to behave in a normal way, so I can't identify with the characters and get frustrated.
This was a very well written essay, and you make really good points. However you lose points because you called them crinkle cut chips, not crisps.
It's all about setup and payoff in an organic way that is good design.
I mean, the fish puzzle you mentioned from Return to Monkey Island is simpler than the spitting contest from MI2, but it's still not that simple. You have to get the correct fish, put it in the bowl, use the pepper on the bowl and then when the eating contest starts pick a fish without pepper from your inventory. There are still steps you can fail at, for instance if you add the pepper when it's still in your inventory.
I didn't mind the puzzles from Return, they also didn't match my expectations when compared to the previous games, but I still found them enjoyable regardless, if a bit too simple.
I think its a sign of a good puzzle that even if you cant figure it out, if you look up a hint/guide it leaves you with a feeling of "oh yeah that actually makes sense"
I recently got Grim fandango… And my fist time through the puzzles felt like they had a lot of moon logic. But the second time though they made a lot more sense.
The problem was that most of the clues were present a long time before the place where they were used. So I'd see the hint that explains one of the upcoming puzzles and be like ok that was neat and then wander around and get a few more hints… And I've forgotten the previous ones because I didn't know what they were referring to at the time. Like sometimes it's hard to tell what's a hint and what's world building and story stuff until you know what the puzzles and their solutions are. Then it's a lot more obvious.
Though I'm still not sure how to actually find the date you need for the race photo finish ticket thing. I'm pretty sure I've found all the clues…I dunno maybe you need outside knowledge on house racing seasons?
Watching this and wondering how the fuck I beat this game when I was 7?
Insightful!
I did enjoy the game, but yeah, the puzzles were on the most part aimed at casual players who just wanted to keep moving. I was rather annoyed that one of the GOOD puzzles, the three flags with holes in them, was autocompleted by the game FOR me. I mean, I knew what to do, but it would have been nice to have done it.
I don't understand why you picked one of the least intricate puzzles in return to monkey island (which itself is only one third of the broader puzzle where you have to complete 3 challenges to become the queen of brr muda) and compared it to one of the most intricate in monkey island 2, completely arbitrarily? like why did you choose those two? not every puzzle in monkey island 2 is that complicated, and there's plenty of puzzles in return that are weird and complex and have a lot of steps.
I love the puzzle in discworld 2 where you have to get ice, a candle and a wooden arm to get a death certificate. Just a funny puzzle and solution
Assuming he has, but I'm wondering if Yahtzee has played Eternam. And if so, what he thinks of it.
The puzzle breakdown reminds me of how good authors try to use narrative devices like foreshadowing, motifs and repetitive designation to make their work come across as naturally self referential and cohesive without having to literally go "REMEMBER BACK IN CHAPTER 3 WHEN…" every time they want to build on something they hinted at previously. Looks like good adventure games, similarly, try to use narrative devices as tools to repeatedly point their player at the solution to their puzzles (mysteries) without spelling them out.
Guess the trick is actually having the chops to use said devices to help the player/reader understand your oh so clever train of logic as a game designer/author without literally explaining it to them them OR leaving them in the dark.
I bet we don't see it in games as often anymore because it's a thing that's fucking hard and time consuming to do properly, especially when you factor in all the unique narrative tools that video games can have. There's no design shortcuts, either: even if you just drape your story around a common plot structure and set of recycled narrative devices that sell well, (hero's journey, anti-hero's journey, battle shonen, loser-getting-road-killed isekai, PT hallway psych horror game, etc) you still have to execute well or people will see it as the schlock that it is.
It's more "economical" to gut the technical story/puzzle design elements of a work to reduce the number of moving parts knowing it's going to sell on brand name and/or art asset quality alone. Whatever, make that cash. The really shitty thing that Monkey Island 2022 did, more insulting than any phoned in puzzle, was imply that the player was wrong for being so passionate about their craft in the first place.
Could it be that once play testing became standard in the industry intricate puzzles were replaced with puzzles that testers could consistently win? I remember when I used to play P&c games and there was always one or 2 puzzles that I had to look up or ask about. But there were also really hard ones that I got, that my friends/family asked me about, and that made me feel smart as fuck. Maybe devs are not understanding that people are willing to forgo getting the puzzle every time, in order to get puzzles that have real challenge and ingenuity.
As an escape room owner I spend entirely too much of my time thinking about what makes a good or bad puzzle. The line between a solution being obvious and nonsensical is fine indeed. Especially with the players always being a huge uncontrollable variable. While in video games you have total control over what does or doesn't work for better or worse so almost getting a puzzle usually won't help. At least in the meat space of an escape room getting people close is usually enough.
Straight talk here. Why did Lucasarts put such ridiculously complicated and/or obtuse puzzles in Lechuck's Revenge? So they could make money off the hintline. They saw how much easy money it pulled in for the first game, then realized that if they filled the second with frustrating puzzles, they could make a lot more. And it worked; the hintline became the company's biggest earner! No joke; the design team explicitly says this in the commentary of the Special Edition. They absolutely did not give a crap about "providing a challenge" or "true satisfaction" or "getting your money's worth" or whatever preachy nonsense. It was a shameless money-making scheme first and last.
So why did players put up with it? Because that was all we had. Remember, this was before the Internet, meaning no Steam, Apple store, no Google Play, none of the myraid of options we have today. If you wanted a point-and-click adventure, your one and only choice was to go to a brick and mortar computer store and find something that was compatible with your computer (a highly thorny issue in itself). If you got stuck anywhere, you either ponied up for the hintline or just plain had to give up. Hey, I was there, and for a lot of aggravation computer games about 98% of the reason I kept going was I didn't have anything better to do.
When the Internet came along, that completely killed the one real purpose for making elaborate puzzles (since you can look up answers or even the whole game played start to finish without spending a cent) and the one real reason for putting up with them (since there are so many other adventure/point-and-click options). There really isn't any point over lamenting this. Times change. Tastes change. We're never going back to the pre-Internet world. That's the reality. Deal.
Oh, ah, in addition to the spitting contest and the "monkey wrench", I'd like to nominate getting the Scabb Island map piece. You need to collect a very-easy-to-miss telescope, and find out how to distract the parrot so you can buy the mirror, and know where to put them, and figure out which of the random pieces of junk in the room to pour the super grog and replace it with the near grog in about eight seconds? Yeesh.
No Yahtzee, I still disagree with you. I understand your point, except… I know for a fact you've got your nostagia goggles turned on full blast for Monkey Island 2. Because I recently played it, and despite HAVING BEATEN IT IN THE PAST, I still got stuck on the exact puzzle you're talking about. It is far less intuitive than you're suggesting. Unintuitive moon logic is the only thing that has ever made adventure puzzles hard. Maybe some logic is more moonbound than others, but also some people drive around shooting a gun out their window, that doesn't make drunk drivers responsible motorists.
Maybe if there where more than one way to solve the puzzle? Like the green drink and wind part together can get you the win but they make the timing really hard. And the horn part alone can get you the win but you're on a time limit. Feel free to ignore me I've never played a puzzle game.
I think the problem with the Green Drink justification is that the Spit was "already used" in a previous puzzle, and the UNT UND PRECICIOUSLY ONE" stereotype to Point and Click problem solving. The Split has been used, and blink you'll miss it drink. Ideally, someone in the bar saying "Marty, why do you always give me the Green Drink? I hate what it does to my spit" after the first act would have been a better hint.
5:50 – The cannon shot is more engaging as it signifies battle…
Look I'm still pissed off that Sam & Max Hit the Road show absolutely no indication that there's another half to Sam & Max's office and where the hell the elevator on the ball of twine is.