You may have seen in my other thread that I was debating whether or not to get the Zork Anthology. After talking to some of you guys I was compelled enough to get it. Planetfall is a total blast! It reminds me of The Dig, being stuck on an alien world trying to make heads or tails of the alien technology. Plus, Floyd is alot of fun, he's quite cartoonish despite this being a text adventure. Floyd even manages to be as funny as Arthur from Journeyman Project 2.

Anyways, I was stuck. I couldn't figure out how to get the key out of the crevice. I didn't want read a walkthrough because it could've spoiled other puzzles for me. I really liked the hint books that Sierra used to have that would just tell you what you need to know and let you get back to the game. Well, apparently Sierra stole the idea from Infocom because they had the same thing, they called them Invisiclues.

So, I went online and found an Invisiclues Database that had all them from the company's history. Apparently somebody from the university in my city went through the trouble of copying them in their entirety and posting them online, what a guy. So I thought I'd pass the discovery onto you guys.

I'm proud to say I've only needed the one clue so far (seriously, how was I supposed to know the curved metal rod was a magnet, the game never mentioned it was a magnet) and I'm about halfway through the game now with 40 points or so. I've made it to the second complex and I've begun repairs on the planet's machines. It's so exciting, I'll be sure to post my full thoughts on the game later. Anybody else here play Planetfall before?

Well the typical representation of the magnet is a curved, horseshoe-like, form :) Some bits in their games are not always clear, often depending on some common knowledge of the '80s or some cultural references — Zork II has am infamous puzzle based around baseball, supposedly evident to any American but I would never have guessed it if I didn't look at the clues. Glad you're having fun though.

Fun trivia: the name InvisiClues comes from the fact that you'd receive a booklet (after ordering it of course) with a special marker. The booklet would have the various question followed by a blank space, and you had to use the marker to reveal the clues and answers written with invisible ink.

And again five of the best Infocom games, including Zork I and Planetfall, were given the Solid Gold treatment, including the clues directly in the game, available by entering "hint". But the main benefit was to give the game a better parser. Patches exist to convert your regular release to the Solid Gold one.

Oh, and if you like The Dig, you might be interested in Starcross. It also has you dealing with alien machinery that you must first figure out, so much that some people claimed LucasArts ripped Infocom for that one.

While we are at it, Sierra got also inspired by Infocom for the scratch 'n sniff card that came with Leisure Suit Larry 7: Leather Goddesses of Phobos did a similar thing much earlier.

Yeah, I felt like a bit of an idiot after seeing the solution. But I still don't think it was obvious enough, sometimes I think some things were kept vague in these titles to help sell hint books. Same could be said of some modern games. Sierra's original hint books for their AGI games were the same. It wasn't until SCI games that they came up with the adventure window to reveal hints. Another reason why I'm looking forward to GOG releasing The Sci-Fi Collection (hopefully).

I'm still surprised at how much I'm enjoying myself with this game. I wasn't expecting me to put Planetfall near the top of my favourite adventure games list, sometimes things just click.

In a nice little circle, I've been interested in Starcross since my early text gaming days because of its absurd mention in the Planetfall Invisiclues!

Starcross is the single hardest game in the Infocom canon. It has its own insider sci-fi references, such as a robot dog that wanders corridors... you'll never guess where that came from. Of course, as the Invisiclues will mention, to solve that puzzle, first you'll need to find the matching scarf...

Hahaha. I won't, won't I? I didn't even need the scarf reference to figure out where the dog came from. BTW, the dog makes a cameo appearance in a recent spinoff TV show with one of the companions (nope, I won't say the name of either show - it's more fun to see if someone else guesses this :). BTW, I loved that scarf, and the one who wore it was my introduction to the character, and is still my favorite.