Lucasarts was the big champion of this one. With their design philosophy of "your game should never become unwinnable, even if you die" and the incredible success of their games, that sort of thing thankfully died out. I haven't seen it in any adventure game in the last 15 years or so, but it's WOEFULLY common in the Sierra days. Seeing it in a modern adventure game is an almost automatic ragequit for me, probably accompanied by an angry letter to the devs.

The worst example that comes to mind was from one of the Kings Quest games (V maybe?) where at one point you are starving to death and have to choose whether to eat the delicious pie or the juicy meat. Figuring I'll need to distract some beastie with the meat later, I eat the pie. HOURS later, you meet the yeti, who can only be defeated by a PIE TO THE FACE. Not only is that absurdly counter-intuitive, at that point it was impossible. I was like 8 at the time, and it was the first time I'd actually genuinely been enraged at a videogame, rather than just frustrated. It was worse than Battletoads. Even worse, Sierra actually thought this was GOOD design, and MOCKED the Lucasarts folks for making their games "too easy." As if intentionally wasting their players' time was some sort of accomplishment. Sierra games are chock-full of this sort of thing, but most of the adventure games from that era had it to some degree.

It was King's Quest V and, to its defense, this sequence doesn't take hours but a couple of minutes (3 or 4). So you don't lose too much time.
Plus, I think it's a logical solution to eat meat instead of pie when Graham tells you how hungry he is from climbing a mountain.

However, all of this doesn't mean that it is great game design. It's a puzzle with a resulting death if you get it wrong. And in between these two things there is nothing more than a short sequence where Graham talks to the Ice Queen.


LucasArts did the same thing in earlier games. It was Loom, where they first decided to do it differently. And, yes, their adventures became quite a bit easier because of that.
But they were, of course, still excellent.


What I hate is when adventures have mazes.

Depends on the maze. Monkey Island had a maze, and so did the first Gabriel Knight. However, if you were properly prepared, you knew just how to navigate them.

So I'll say "I hate when adventures have mazes that you can't find a map for".

In King's Quest VI, there's a puzzle where Prince Alexander has to throw a stone at a (sapient) object. If you haven't been doing things in a completely arbitrary order, he misses, and the main, epic quest line breaks. Individual puzzles in this game are very logical, no cat hair or yeti pies; it's this fake difficulty that spoiled an otherwise awesome game.

Yikes, thanks for the list! Incidentally I'm currently halfway through Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within ... would anyone mind telling me which item they're talking about, the lack of which makes the game unwinnable? PM would be fine, if you want to avoid spoilers for anyone else.

So that's what it's called.
Lost Forever is the exact reason I never completed Arx Fatalis. Even worse was the game is kinda designed to not have this problem

To anyone who might be considering playing it for the first time, fair warning. There are some special Stones (you'll know them). Don't go leaving them anywhere unaccounted. You need them all in the end, so don't do like me and throw them at a trap in the only area of the game which becomes utterly inaccessible after you pass it.

Well, there are basically two things I expect from a good adventure game: that it be consistent in the type of logic it uses, and that that logic fits the setting. Specifically, when your adventure game takes place in the real world, then for god's sake adhere to real world logic. I've played adventures that shoot for a "mature", realistic setting, yet have the player pick up everything that isn't nailed down, from a cheese sandwich to an iron bar. Not even wanna go into the puzzles themselves. That kind of thing is OK in your typical wacky comic game, but when you're trying to be serious, than every little thing the player does undermines what you're trying to achieve.

Actually I never thought about that, being so accustomed to the unlimited inventory convention, no matter how wacky, that for me it's just part of the game mechanics and not so much of the story. But of course, you're right. It is pretty silly in general, but even more so if the adventure tries to be serious and mature.

Some adventures have a little different approach. They let you pick up bigger things only as "thoughts" or "reminders" - you don't put the actual broom in your inventory, but the memory that there is a broom somewhere nearby. Then when you try it on another object and it's likely that it will achieve something, the player character goes off to fetch the broom and, with broom in hand, solves the puzzles.

Could you give me the names of these games? Because that sounds really clever. The only adventure I've ever played that used a similar system is DIscworld Noir, in which the hero makes notes in a scrapbook and you can use these notes like inventory items. I've always thought that should have caught on more. But adventure game designers seem to be extremely resilient against innovation.

Yeah, I should have phrased that differently. Of course, I meant mazes that you have to stumble through yourself and map them yourself.

Gabriel Knight and Monkey Island are good examples how mazes can be done.

Both the forest and the monkey head/hell mazes are actually puzzles which need to be solved and they're a breeze to get through then. Same in Gabriel knight with the swamp.

Example for bad mazes in adventures: Inherit the Earth.
Such a well made and beautiful game but all these damn mazes!!
Hmmm... Which puzzle are you talking about? I don't remember it.
Actually, I absolutely hate adventure games that limit your inventory. Yes, it's not realistic but that is how an adventure game is played.
If I want a limited inventory, I play an ultra-realistic RPG with inventory micromanagement and not an adventure.

But I agree that a "realistic" adventure should have realistic puzzles that fit within the game's universe.

Ah, well, I saw that in two or three but I don't quite remember which ones they were. And I couldn't even promise that they're consistent in this approach, but it's a start. Could be A Vampyre Story had something like this in it? So far I've only played the demo, but I think that might have been one of the few occasions. The other one (or two) I can't recall at the moment.

But the Blackwell series and Gemini Rue partly use a system like that in Discworld Noir, where you gather notes and can combine or use them on other stuff. Unless I'm mistaken, I think these games also restrict the inventory items to smaller things a human would be able to carry around, like photos, letters, a gun etc.


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Is there really such a thing as an "ultra-realistic" CRPG with credible inventory micromanagement? I think I've never played one. ;)

From my experience, adventures that actually restrict your inventory in a way that you'd have to manage it are very very rare. I can only think of hybrids like Dizzy or Snoopy & Peanuts, where most of the time you can just carry 1-3 items at a time. Real point-and-click adventures probably wouldn't restrict your inventory but just offer a more realistic approach on what is feasible to pick up and keep carrying around. You might not be able to put a ladder or a big bucket or whatever in your inventory, but you also wouldn't be required to, because the puzzles wouldn't make use of them, or if they do, it would be in the same room.

In general I think adventure games should celebrate the core of the genre, which is basically "interactive story." Whenever they are at all frustrating I think they lost their way.

Resonance, of course. Highly important topics automatically go into Long-term Memory, and you can put any item in the game into Short-Term Memory. Memory items from either group can be used in dialogue. No stupidly large item is being carried around, ever.

Thanks, guys.