Completing a game

[Edwin Xie]

When I play a game, I keep trying, then at some time I get stuck, and I ask on the forums. I always wonder how the people who answered knew how to do that part, even though they are not authors. The point is, what are the ways people use to complete a game? I also ask this to myself when I look at walkthroughs. Do other people wonder this? Is it that I'm not looking at enough walkthroughs to strategically complete a game? Or do I not really understand the strategy in the hints?

[Dan2552]

When I play a game, I keep trying, then at some time I get stuck, and I ask on the forums. I always wonder how the people who answered knew how to do that part, even though they are not authors. The point is, what are the ways people use to complete a game? I also ask this to myself when I look at walkthroughs. Do other people wonder this? Is it that I'm not looking at enough walkthroughs to strategically complete a game? Or do I not really understand the strategy in the hints?

different people are good at different parts.

on point and click games i get totally stuck on parts where my brother can do - and when he gets stuck i can seem to do it  : quite strange how the mind works

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Sometimes you have to take a break while trying to solve a puzzle, so that when you are back you can try to solve it a completely different way.

What are the ways people use to complete the game? I think these, in order:

- They go through the motions of ordinary life (in TLJ, for istance, that meant a lot of the first chapter, as April always clearly stated what she had to do - and it was pretty mundane stuff you'd be expected to do anyway, like go to the studio and work on her painting).

- They look for little things to solve (again in TLJ, I solved the boiler puzzle before I had to. Why? Because it was there to solve, and I thought I might as well save time. )

- They start identifying puzzles that prevent the story from advancing, and focus on those.

- They try and solve them logically.

- They try slightly more far-fetching solutions.

- They try wacky and bizarre, and hope like HELL it doesn't work, because that'd mean the game designer was bad enough to warrant public lynching.

- They either go to sleep and try another day, with a fresh mind, or give in and surf for hints/walkthroughs, which guarantees they'll get stuck again very soon - they always will until they can understand the game's logic and mechanics, not on a theoretical level, of course, but on an... intuitive, "this-is-the-way-the-WORLD-works" way.

Just my 2 cents. :

[jetxl]

When I'm stuck and look at a walktrough. I either have a "Why didn't I think of that!" or "That's far to hand to figure out!" fealing.
The latter on is common in sierra games.

[Pelican]

Sometimes, the problem is even identifying the puzzle! I mean, the first time I played Riven, there was so much to explore and look at that I didn't know what was relevant. When I did finally get a walkthrough, I did actually go, 'Ah, I see how it works now!'. The solution hadn't occurred to me, but I could see how it was solved. On the other hand, there are some games where I still cannot work out how they were solved even with the walkthrough. I guess you just have to hope that the author has been consistent with their puzzles, so if you can solve one, the others should work somewhat the same. Like Discworld 1&2 - the puzzles solutions tended to be a bit barmy, but they were all like that, so you knew you had to 'think outside the box'. And of course, there's always the good old, 'click everything on everything else until you get it.' 

[Radiant]

What I love is when you suddenly understand the (sometimes twisted) logic behind a game. What comes to mind is Spellcasting 201, as well as Sorcerer. At a certain point you get a feel for how the puzzles should work (e.g. for a spell you need squirrel vomit. Therefore, you summon a squirrel, carry it to the school cafeteria, and have it eat the food )

[Snarky]

- They either go to sleep and try another day, with a fresh mind, or give in and surf for hints/walkthroughs, which guarantees they'll get stuck again very soon - they always will until they can understand the game's logic and mechanics, not on a theoretical level, of course, but on an... intuitive, "this-is-the-way-the-WORLD-works" way.

That's not been my experience. I've solved games by looking up hints and walkthroughs as well as by just keep pounding my head against the wall each time I was stuck. It didn't seem to make a difference to my ability to solve next puzzle, or my need to use a hint the next time I was stuck.

Nor do I usually feel that I'm stuck because I don't understand the game's logic and mechanics, but because I overlooked some object, didn't see why I would need THAT to do THAT, was trying to solve a puzzle I didn't have all the pieces for yet, etc. One frustrating case is when you need to trigger some event that's completely unrelated to what you're trying to do in order to advance.

It would be nice if adventure game puzzle worlds had enough personality that you'd need to get to know them in order to play them. I haven't seen that, though. They're more or less hard, and more or less fair, and some skew more to one kind of puzzle, but that's about it. And so getting into the specific mindset of the game doesn't help much.

If there's a caveat to this, it's that there's plenty of games I haven't played, sometimes because they've been too quirky for my taste. The Spellcasting games are one example. Also, I believe what you say may be more the case for text adventures (IF).

[Edwin Xie]

I think I have had problems identifying the puzzle, and places I've overlooked, and what I am supposed to do.