Types of puzzles you love

[Crimson Wizard]

I like it when the game establishes a balance between common-life situations, purely logical and and unordinary, eccentric puzzles. I like when you have to use items in the way they were not designed for, or perform an ordinary action in an unordinary way.

Yet I demand each puzzle I solve to have common sense. Senseless puzzles must not exist at all.

I like when the game offers you to find a way to make something you already did before in the same game but using another technique and other items. This really makes player use his creativity and imagination.

Oh, and I love word duels like in Monkey Island

[FamousAdventurer77]

As a gamer of 22+ years, particularly adventure games, here's just a little list of my general likes and dislikes:

Likes:

1) Dialogue-based puzzles. They're something a little different. Usually dialogue is meant to push the story forward, drop hints to the player, or provide just some background nicety and entertainment. But I like dialogue-based puzzles because some of them really make you think.

2) Inventory-based puzzles. Yes, the staple or (cliche, depending on your point of view)  for gaming, but I live by the classic mindset of poking around wherever possible, "taking everything that isn't nailed down, and you either have to find the loose nails or solve the nail-removing puzzles."

3) Deductive reasoning puzzles. This is a must for mystery games but also for adventure games too, in that "if A and B don't work and/or seem illogical, it must be C or D." I'm particularly a big mystery fan so I probably love these the most.

4) Puzzles that make you think outside of the box. I loved Bog's Adventure for this.

5) I don't know how to describe this kind of puzzle/gameplay, but something I loved about Legend of Kyrandia 2: The Hand of Fate and King's Quest 6 was the potion-making and spell-casting parts of the game-- in that some of the spell components were given to you outrightly while others required some thinking and deduction on your part as chances are you had to make do with the next-closest thing you could find.

Dislikes:

1) Minigames that are a misnomer for puzzles. I found that most modern games that pass themselves off as "adventures" are guilty as sin of this (ie, the Nancy Drew titles I played, Women's Murder Club, etc.) While the narrative has to prevail, still, when I see a mystery game I expect to do things like interrogate suspects, note their reactions, investigate locations the victim/suspects have been to, find clues, etc.

2) Completely illogical puzzles. I'm thinking moldy cheese to start up Mordack's machine in King's Quest V.

3) But with that said, in case others haven't played this game I'll shield this

Spoiler

The bit about cheese-making in Apprentice I with the horse stomach saddle

[close]

I love that game (series) but got stumped at the part and had to look at the walkthrough because the reference made

Spoiler

when looking at the saddle

[close]

flew over my head. Even the game creator acknowledged this but apologized.

So yes, challenging puzzles are great, illogical ones aren't. And while the intent of the cheese/saddle puzzle was clever...I guess you could say I don't like poorly executed puzzles where a reference can easily fly over the player's head.

4) Puzzles/sequences that are based on some kind of complex non-optional minigame-- not in the same sense as minigames in #1, but I'm talking about playing Nine Men's Morris in Conquests of the Longbow, or that thing at the end of Jessica Plunkenstein: The Dusseldorf Conspiracy.

5) My absolute most dread type...PIXEL HUNTS. Thou shalt not have to pixel hunt. Hotspots should be clearly defined, AGS makes this incredibly simple.

6) The one thing worse than a pixel hunt? Pixel hunting while the screen is completely black. That is just plain masochism. (I'm looking at you, Uncertainty Machine! I like that game up until it hits that part.)