It's a matter of degree. Some dead ends are enjoyable. Being in front of an obstacle and going "oooh I should have kept that item for THIS place" can be fun. It's not too different from an FPS's "damn i shouldn't have wasted that grenade back then". And Space Quest 2's alien kiss still makes me giggle.

These dead ends are puzzles by themselves. They can make you think and realize your mistake. And realizing how obnoxiously long ago it took place is part of the joke. In Sierra games, failures of all kind could be funny. With the right mindset.

But invisible dead ends don't constitute a puzzle. Having missed an object missed because you didn't check that specific place during that short window of opportunity, then walking around without knowing what kind of action should trigger what kind of effect, is too abstract. There's some fun to be had if you restart the game, frantically exploring each corner, and stumble upon a useful, sought item (games were actually short enough to allow it) but quite often, the required amount of luck and counter-intuitive thinking made the solution more arbitrary than cunning. Cyberdream's Dark Seed was particularly awful with that.

Games now avoid dead-ends (or even deaths) because people have little patience for them, but both managed to be quite fun when implemented right. Which old Sierra games didn't always.

Just saying, it's not that the concept itself is wrong.

Well, I guess, I have yet to encounter the first dead end in a game, that I - personally - find "enjoyable".

I'm pretty sure you already did, if not in the point and click genre. You certainly ended in an impossible situation, in some RPG, because of the lack of some item, clue or preparation, and had to re-load because of it (or to die in a kamikaze attempt). These are common failure states, equivalent to deaths.

Also, no "choose your own adventure" books ?

Really, I think the main issue with point and click dead ends is their visibility. A slight delay instead of an immediate "you lose, reload y/n" is okay, but entirely hint-less failure states are awkward.

For instance : if a dialogue option prevents an NPC to cooperate on a crucial thing, I prefer understanding it by myself (or being nudged to it, with some "oh no they won't talk to you anymore ? then we're screwed") than having an immediate "FAILED EXIT/RETRY" interruption. It's subjective, but it feels more organic to me.

Again, matter of degree I think.

Rise of the Dragon was one of the first adventure games I played and I think it's a very underrated one. A cool detective game, in a Cyberpunk-Noir style (like Blade Runner).

It doesn't have moon-logic puzzles and its difficulty relies mostly on the fact that it has an ingame clock and the player only has a few days to solve the case.

A great classic, from the times of Sierra/Dynamix, which should deserve more attention now than it did on its time.

https://www.gog.com/game/rise_of_the_dragon

EDIT:
Also, it was one of the very few point n'click games from the 20th century that I could beat without a walkthrough, so I guess that says something.

Genuine question: what makes you think, you knew better what I enjoy than I myself do?

It's less about the enjoyment than the definition. It's not about your emotion about things, but about the labels on things.

My assumption is that you've met okay "dead end" states of different forms that you didn't truly classify as such, because they felt more natural than they do in clunky points and clicks.

I believe that "dead ends" (any "required earlier reload") are broader than the prototypes discussed here - and too broad for your statement to be completely accurate. Am I horribly wrong ? That is, are there zero okay gaming moment in any genre that you could technically call "dead end state failure" ? Given their variety it would surprise me.

(Edit : Baba is you ?)

Well, thank you very much for your assessment, Dr. Dipl. Psych. Tellika,
but I think we have to end the session here, because despite your professional opinion: I know very well, what I enjoy, and what not.

I also know very well, what constitutes as a dead end in games.
I even encountered dead ends in various genres, not just P'n'Cs.

However (and not that it matters here, since this thread is explicitly about Sierra adventures), I don't consider it a dead end, "having to reload" because I failed to defeat a (mid-)boss, or because I botched a jump.

Of course, I might be wrong, and the high blood pressure, the sweating and excessive swearing, and the barely supressed instinct to smash things, or throw something out of the window, was really just my way to express my enjoyment in the moment.

Stoopid me, huh?
Thinking, I experienced anger and rage, while in reality I simply had the fun of my life.
Thanks for clearing that up, Doc.

Have a nice one.


PS:
Yeah, I would say so. But hey, we just came to the conclusion that I don't know shit, so - don't let my opinion over your competence in the field keep you from assessing the emotions and feelings of others.

Who knows - I might be wrong again in my feelings.
Wouldn't want to argue with you over that.

/s

Right. A conversation on gog forums.

Have fun.

Freddy Pharkas has more hidden and unfair deaths than any other Sierra game, so I don't see how you can recommend that?

Even doing NOTHING AT ALL in the game gets you killed, because there are all the time some invisible timers running in the background.


Anyway, I'm not 100% sure about this as I haven't played any Sierra games in few years, but I think some of the Sierra's lesser known games could be easier, like EcoQuest series.

You are right, but those invisible timers are only in the Act II and they act as a "puzzle". But the trial and error kind of puzzles, it is unfair, this is, once you know what's going you can speed thngs or do it a second time. Debatable, indeed,
Anyway I recomend the game because there are worse cases in Siera games, because it is fun and has strong puzzles and humour, good writing, etc, but well, maybe it should not have been in my list, indeed. Because it is what I specifically was critic with :D

Is NOBODY going to suggest Leisure Suit Larry 4?

First of all thanks for all the suggestions. I will give them a try. Feel free to suggest more though :)

I want to clarify what I mean by dead ends and what I am tryig to avoid to play. I dont mind dying in adventure games as it can add tension to scenes. "Dead and states", i.e. you cannot finishing the game because you didnt get an item or didnt talk to a person in time and now there is no option to go back however I hate.

This has nothing to do with "instant gratification of younger generations". I will be 38 years old soon and just dont have the time to restart a game because of a cruel design choice. I also dont want to play while following a walkthrough at every point as that defeats the purpose of me playing and experiencing the game for myself. Sure I might use one if I get stuck for a long time but having the dread of being in an already lost state because the game is poorly designed and I missed one interaction I can do without.

I think claiming a game is poorly designed because you couldn't figure it out or made a mistake is an excuse.

I mean, there are in fact poor design choices a developer can make. Or at least ones seen as poor by the vast majority of consumers. Dead ends in adventure games that take hours to notice are, I would say, one of the more objectively bad design choices in the history of games.

New doesn't mean good, but neither does old. There were bad games/choices back then, just as there are now. I love a lot of Sierra's games, Space Quest 3 was actually the first PC game I remember playing, but dead ends were BS then and are BS now.

I don't think that can be measured objectively.

Back then, dead ends, mazes, and deadly traps were all considered good design choices. One criteria for good games was how much challenge they offer, and challenge really meant things like that.

Obviously adventure games moved on from that, and dead ends were replaced by things like pixel hunting, which also was considered good design back then.

From today's perspective all of the above can be annoying, because there have been other things to replace those.

But years ago, different story. Reading older game magazines is very revealing, for instance you can find reviews where pointing and clicking is bashed because it takes away the challenge of trying to find the right verb to use with parser.

There is a niche group of players who even today prefer those things. I forget the game, but at least one point and click game that was crowdfunded made hotspot indicators optional, because some backers badly wanted to have the challenge of pixel hunting,