that is true tom.
In the famous pirate game Secret of Monkey island (there is a great script
on gamefaqs, I recommend reading it since it's hilarious!).
There was a rather amusing puzzle where you needed to break a prisoner out
of jail. The way you did this was to collect a mug of grog (a very acidic
drink), from the scum bar, then carry it to the jail, however the grog would
melt through the mug, meaning you needed to carry six mugs and keep shifting
the grog into a new one everytime the item you carried changed from "mug of
grog" to "melting mug"
this would be a horrible puzzle in if, having turn after turn trying to pour
grog from one mug to another, in monkey island however simply using one mug
with the melting mug would do it, until finally you could use the grog on
the cell door.
A menue would work in audio, however myself I'm probably more in favour of a
limited parza system like the one in Eamon as I've said before, since in a
game like descent into madness or chillingham, ---- or heck even entombed,
by the time you've listened through one menue of objects, listened and
arrowed threw a similar menue of commands, then a second menue of objects
you've got quite a task on your hands, not to mention adding options for
newly discovered objects such as when you examine a wall and find a secret
pannel which you then also need to examine could be a bit of a pest.
Again, this is another thing I like about Eamon sinse like many muds it will
pick up the first few letters of an object and assume that is it's name,
thus put key in lock could be abbreviated to pu ke in lo, while open iron
chest would be op o.
Either way you did it, another advantage to such a limited system is that
you can have illogical puzzles who's logic can be discovered by the player
and often give them a giggle.
for example in Monkey island there is an occasion when you need to put
together a recipe, however all the items you find are somewhat not what is
called for. For example the recipe calls for three drops of monkey blood,
but you can only find a fine wine but your character remarks "oooooh, grape
blood!" thus turning a potentially quite irritating puzzle into something
not to bad and giving the player a laugh at the same time.
I thought rather the same thing with the coin in chillingham, since unless
you know the tradition of dropping coins down the well that isn't obvious,
but a clue happens when you examine the well.
Beware the Grue!
dark.
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