by bryanb » Wed Apr 08, 2020 4:36 am
Difficulty in text games is a relative thing. I know many people found Zork II and Deadline more difficult than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I definitely didn't. A puzzle that one reasonably intelligent person finds easy isn't necessarily going to be easy for another. We all have the ability to be obtuse and not see solutions that are right under our noses. And parsers can be unreasonable and downright hostile. I can't count how many times I've "solved" a puzzle mentally but failed to type in the right words and as a result thought I was doing something wrong and went back to square one. That said, I'd like to think that there are some games we can universally consider hard because they are designed not to be solved. Games that are intended to be exercises in frustration...games that mock and belittle all who play...games that are misanthropic paeans to some human-hating deity. This is the thread for those games.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy stands out in my mind because it was a game I really, really wanted to solve but utterly failed to do so for years. I played the game before reading the books so it was my introduction to Douglas Adams' fantastic writing. I'm not sure there's ever been a funnier IF game written. It was also a space game and I love space games. I ended up breaking down and using a walkthrough to solve it
which I hate to do. Whenever I've gone back to try to play it again I get stuck again.
Curses by Graham Nelson was another tough one. It has a really entertaining beginning, but after a while you start to realize that this game -- and Graham himself -- really doesn't want you to succeed. Graham ended up admitting he was disappointed that so many people were ultimately able to win the game. It was one the few new text games I played in the 90s pre-comp era and that's probably the main reason I put enough time in it to actually solve it. I do recommend it to the patient.
I trust Roody's opinion enough to add Enemies by Andy Phillips to the list. It's the kind of game that starts kicking your ass practically from the moment you start it up. I never got very far into the game, but what I saw looked great.
What's on your list of most difficult games? Also, on a related note, has there ever been a published text adventure written that no player other than the author has ever been able to solve? If so, we should totally work together to beat it.
Difficulty in text games is a relative thing. I know many people found Zork II and Deadline more difficult than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I definitely didn't. A puzzle that one reasonably intelligent person finds easy isn't necessarily going to be easy for another. We all have the ability to be obtuse and not see solutions that are right under our noses. And parsers can be unreasonable and downright hostile. I can't count how many times I've "solved" a puzzle mentally but failed to type in the right words and as a result thought I was doing something wrong and went back to square one. That said, I'd like to think that there are some games we can universally consider hard because they are designed not to be solved. Games that are intended to be exercises in frustration...games that mock and belittle all who play...games that are misanthropic paeans to some human-hating deity. This is the thread for those games.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy stands out in my mind because it was a game I really, really wanted to solve but utterly failed to do so for years. I played the game before reading the books so it was my introduction to Douglas Adams' fantastic writing. I'm not sure there's ever been a funnier IF game written. It was also a space game and I love space games. I ended up breaking down and using a walkthrough to solve it
which I hate to do. Whenever I've gone back to try to play it again I get stuck again.
Curses by Graham Nelson was another tough one. It has a really entertaining beginning, but after a while you start to realize that this game -- and Graham himself -- really doesn't want you to succeed. Graham ended up admitting he was disappointed that so many people were ultimately able to win the game. It was one the few new text games I played in the 90s pre-comp era and that's probably the main reason I put enough time in it to actually solve it. I do recommend it to the patient.
I trust Roody's opinion enough to add Enemies by Andy Phillips to the list. It's the kind of game that starts kicking your ass practically from the moment you start it up. I never got very far into the game, but what I saw looked great.
What's on your list of most difficult games? Also, on a related note, has there ever been a published text adventure written that no player other than the author has ever been able to solve? If so, we should totally work together to beat it.