{"id":350,"date":"2014-05-06T08:37:42","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T15:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/?p=350"},"modified":"2014-05-06T09:49:09","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T16:49:09","slug":"lucian-smith-on-best-individual-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/?p=350","title":{"rendered":"Lucian Smith on Best Individual Puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi!\u00a0 I\u2019m Lucian Smith, and back in the day (that day being a Tuesday in 1997), I wrote a puzzle that ended up winning that year\u2019s XYZZY Award for Best Individual Puzzle: the language puzzle in\u00a0The Edifice<\/a>\u00a0(which also won Best Puzzles and that year\u2019s IF Comp).\u00a0 Since then, I\u2019ve mostly dabbled or collaborated on the writing games end of things, but I\u2019ve stayed involved in the community mostly through hanging out on ifMUD–my most recent significant contributions are probably hosting the XYZZY award presentations there, and writing the occasional reviews such as this one and the same thing last year.<\/p>\n

As before, I\u2019m not going to worry about spoiling the puzzles nominated here, and will be assuming that you\u2019ve played the entirety of all the games, or at least that you\u2019ve played all of the games you want to before reading this review.<\/p>\n

All my transcripts of the transcriptable games are available at https:\/\/drive.google.com\/#folders\/0B71r5kLs3FliRkMzVW5JdWtkNTA<\/a>. As a side note, the lack of transcriptability for the CYOA games continues to be a horrible deficiency in the system, and I\u2019m frankly astonished that any system can have lasted this long without it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Creating the meat monster in Coloratura<\/em> (Lynnea Glasser)<\/h2>\n

So, Coloratura<\/a> was a delightful game with a very unique protagonist with unusual abilities, and those unusual abilities were used in a variety of interesting ways to make up the various puzzles of the game.\u00a0 One can easily see why it was nominated for Best Puzzles, and it follows inevitably that at least one of those puzzles would be nominated for Individual Puzzle.\u00a0 So the question becomes:\u00a0 what was it about this puzzle in particular that made it stand out from the rest of the game?<\/p>\n

I have to say that playing through with the expectation that there was a \u2018creating the meat monster\u2019 puzzle in the game somewhere diminished the effect of solving the puzzle.\u00a0 Instead of entering the freezer with the goal of \u2018maybe there\u2019s something here that can help me get around or disperse the crowd outside\u2019, I instead saw piles of meat and thought, \u2018Oh, I bet this is where I create a meat monster.\u2019\u00a0 I typed \u2018enter meat\u2019, which at this point was a fairly standard command to enter, and boom, meat monster created.<\/p>\n

My guess is that this puzzle worked for most people on the same principle as a joke works:\u00a0 the best humor tends to contain a moment that is surprising, but which makes sense in a different context.\u00a0 Here, too, the response to \u2018enter meat\u2019 is surprising, but makes sense, given the context of this unusual protagonist.\u00a0 It also serves to move the mythology forward, with new insights into how the world works from your shifted perspective.<\/p>\n

So it was clearly a good moment, even if (as in my case) the surprise was lessened due to spoilers.\u00a0 Does it work as a puzzle, per se?\u00a0 For me, the best puzzles work when you have a clear intent, you try something that you think might work, and eventually get to the point where your intent matches your actions, and the world responds accordingly.\u00a0 The problem with classifying this moment in the game as \u2018a good puzzle\u2019 is that I cannot see how player intent is involved, other than them messing around trying to enter various random things.\u00a0 Which, again, is a perfectly fine thing to happen and to put into a game.\u00a0 It\u2019s just not what I would call a \u2018puzzle\u2019.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an analogy:\u00a0 in DoubleFine\u2019s new game Broken Age<\/em>, you play through the game as one of two characters, and can switch between them as often as you want.\u00a0 There\u2019s a moment in the game where the connection between the two worlds is revealed, and like a good joke, it is totally surprising but totally makes sense in a different context.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the best moments in the game.\u00a0 But I would not classify it as the best *puzzle* in the game, because it didn\u2019t involve any player intent and manipulation of the game world.\u00a0 There was slightly more player intent here, but not a ton\u2014I\u2019m glad the moment was in the game, but am somewhat frustrated by it being nominated by players as the \u2018best puzzle\u2019.<\/p>\n

To contrast that moment with a different moment in the game that\u2019s more what I would call a \u2018puzzle\u2019, at one point you\u2019re privy to an argument, and the Captain says she\u2019s going to radio for help.\u00a0 Then the game straight-up tells you, \u201cyou have to get to the radio before she does.\u201d\u00a0 So off you go to the radio room, and start messing around with the stuff you find there.\u00a0 Direct sabotage doesn\u2019t work like it did the last time you had to break something, but as you fiddle with things, you eventually work out that the radio has a tape player in it, and that you can pick up magnetism from a nearby compass.\u00a0 In a sudden flash of insight, I realized I might be able to take the magnetism from the compass and use it to re-write the tape in the tape player\u2014I tried this, and it worked!\u00a0 And then, not only did it stop the Captain from radioing for help, but converted one of the crew to my side, advancing the plot and the mythology of the world in one go.\u00a0 It was a great moment as well as a good puzzle, and I kind of wish the nominations had gone with that one instead.\u00a0 I suppose it serves me right for never playing anything before the votes are in, though.<\/p>\n

Discovering the type of route that works in Threediopolis<\/em> (Andrew Schultz)<\/h2>\n

I really bounced hard off of this game<\/a>.\u00a0 The introduction text immediately told me, \u201cthere\u2019s not going to be any pretense of plot here, just some word puzzles,\u201d in a way that managed to make this sound tremendously unappealing to me.\u00a0 Normaly this would be great, because then I could just quit the game and go on with my life, but in this case I was obligated to write a review, so I pressed on.\u00a0 My disengagement with the game only increased.\u00a0 \u201cMan,\u201d I thought, \u201cthis is just like that game last year with the word puzzles and anagrams.\u201d\u00a0 Then I looked up who the author was of that game, and it turned out to be Andrew Schultz, again.\u00a0 So hey, that explains it!\u00a0 I was actually a bit less frustrated with the game at that point, since at that point I knew mine was a fairly idiosyncratic response to Andrew\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n

However, I never did make any progress at all towards any of the goals of this game, and in fact never even figured out what those goals might be.\u00a0 None of the instructions and none of the clues in the game made the least amount of sense to me, and I hadn\u2019t the foggiest idea of where to start.\u00a0 Looking up hints similarly didn\u2019t help, and it wasn\u2019t until I finally read \u2018starting at your initial location, spell out words going to the listed locations with directions,\u2019 that I understood what was going on.\u00a0 Which was too late, because that realization was the whole puzzle.<\/p>\n

This was unfortunate, since in the abstract, \u2018discovering the type of route that works\u2019 sounds like a pretty good puzzle!\u00a0 All the pieces were there to make it work; there\u2019s a starting place, an ending place, a limited set of ways to get from one to the other, and the potential for crossword-style clues if you need hints along the way.\u00a0 If I didn\u2019t personally cringe at the setup here for some reason, I think I could have enjoyed making that leap of intuition to the solution.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I never even found the starting blocks.<\/p>\n

Earning One Million Dollars in ULTRA BUSINESS TYCOON III<\/em> (Porpentine)<\/h2>\n

Really, XYZZY nominators?\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 There are indeed puzzles in ULTRA BUSINESS TYCOON III<\/a>, but \u2018earning one million dollars\u2019 is not actually one of them.\u00a0 Dollars are the *score* by which your progress is marked in this game.\u00a0 Saying that earning a million bucks is your favorite puzzle in this game is like claiming that scoring 350 points is your favorite puzzle in Zork.<\/p>\n

\u201cAha,\u201d claims the alert and long-time reader, \u201cin 2011, you wrote favorably<\/a>\u00a0of \u2018escaping the tower\u2019 in \u2018Indigo\u2019, which is the exact same thing!\u00a0 It\u2019s the final puzzle that\u2019s a stand-in for all the puzzles of the game!\u201d\u00a0 \u201cNot so,\u201d I reply, \u201cBut I\u2019m going to stop using quotation marks for my response.\u201d\u00a0 You see, Indigo had a single mechanic in it, which you first had to discover and then had to execute:\u00a0 when you were done executing the mechanic, you had accomplished the final goal (\u2018escaping the tower\u2019), and were done with the game.\u00a0 Here, gaining money is not a mechanic, it is a reward.\u00a0 There\u2019s no one thing that you do throughout the game (other than \u2018click links\u2019, I suppose) that could possibly count, for me at least, as anything coherent enough to count as \u2018a puzzle\u2019.<\/p>\n

I should probably emphasize at this point that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the game itself that warrants the annoyance I\u2019ve expressed so far.\u00a0 Keeping score by way of money earned is perfectly valid, and thematically appropriate for the game Porpentine was writing here.\u00a0 I\u2019m just annoyed that anyone would think to nominate a scoring system as a puzzle.<\/p>\n

To contrast, then, let\u2019s discuss an actual puzzle from the game:\u00a0 getting past the bees.\u00a0 Since this is a story-heavy CYOA, the vast majority of the game consists merely of clicking on things, and enjoying the prose that results.\u00a0 Getting past the bees, however, requires some actual thinking:\u00a0 you have to guess that there\u2019s a way to get past the bee gate; you have to read the text of the \u2018difficulty levels\u2019 carefully, make the intuitive leap that the two are connected, and then implement your plan.\u00a0 Sure, it\u2019s still CYOA, but it\u2019s still a satisfying puzzle-solving moment.<\/p>\n

Getting out of the lab in Chemistry and Physics<\/em> (Colin Sandel and Carolyn VanEseltine)<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s not particularly a lot to this puzzle<\/a>\u2014if you go everywhere and click on everything, you end up with all of three items, two of which are obviously combinable (the alcohol and the explosives), and one of which has an explicit use (the glassware).\u00a0 This leaves one item whose use is potentially unknown (the explosives), and the only question becomes \u2018where do I put this\u2019?\u00a0 After some experimentation, I worked out where it probably went, and was rewarded by a blank screen\u2014somehow, I ran into a bug.\u00a0 I asked a friend about it, who then ran into the exact same bug, despite having played and beaten the game before.\u00a0 Chalk one up to Twine instability, I guess?\u00a0 I can work out the basics of what happens after that, at least\u2014you somehow get it lit, then break the glass to draw the villain there, skedaddle, and then the explosion takes out the door and the bad guy.\u00a0 A relatively complex puzzle for a hypertext game, and reasonable for a short game like this.<\/p>\n

Maximizing your profit in Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder<\/em> (Ryan Veeder)<\/h2>\n

I must admit that this game<\/a> was not compelling enough to me personally to actually try to solve it.\u00a0 I got to the end of the game, couldn\u2019t figure out how to swim, and then promptly gave up.\u00a0 However, it seemed to me that the nominated puzzle would be a pretty good puzzle.<\/p>\n

The basic idea here is that you are on a sinking ship filled with treasure, trying to snag as much of it as you can before it sinks.\u00a0 As you go, you also have to figure out how to get the materials you need to swim away at the end (or at least, I presume that\u2019s what you have to do.)\u00a0 So there\u2019s several points to the puzzle:\u00a0 you have to figure out how many moves it takes to get each treasure, whether those moves can be optimized, whether you can combine moves in getting one treasure with getting a different treasure, and finally whether all that effort is worth it, or if you should instead spend your moves grabbing something else.\u00a0 Combine this with the sequential nature of the rising water (first it covers the things on the floor, then it covers low things in the room, then it covers everything in the room, then it moves on to the next upper deck), and you have the makings of a quite complicated yet still feasibly-solvable optimization puzzle.\u00a0 If the game had been more personally compelling, or even if I had been able to figure out how to swim away at the end, I might have been willing to tackle it.\u00a0 And indeed, I watched a conversation on ifMUD where the participants were collectively and individually solving this puzzle and sharing their progress, and it sounded like they were having fun.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably worth pointing out that while on the surface, \u2018maximizing your score\u2019 and \u2018getting a million dollars\u2019 may seem like the same sort of thing (I complained about dollars being your score, after all), but they really are not.\u00a0 The million dollars was just \u2018playing the game\u2019, while \u2018maximizing your score\u2019 is indeed a separate puzzle in its own right.<\/p>\n

Three-latch door in Faithful Companion<\/em> (Matt Weiner)<\/h2>\n

This<\/a> was a reasonable puzzle, but perhaps slightly unfair.\u00a0 The basic idea is that a ghost is following you, repeating everything you do two moves after you do it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a door with three latches on it, each activated and inactivated by pushing on the latch\u2014therefore, every time you open two of the latches, by the time you\u2019re on the third one, the ghost is pushing the first one (as you did two turns ago), locking it again.<\/p>\n

I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to work this out within the confines of the above description, thinking that if I pushed one button twice, then moved on to the others, the ghost would then be pushing the latch at just the right time\u2026 but no.\u00a0 The trick turns out to be that you have to lock the ghost out of the room so you can open the door in peace.\u00a0 I had actually had that idea at one point, but whatever I had tried hadn\u2019t worked, and then I forgot about it, so when I finally asked for a hint, I was all, \u2018I thought I tried that!\u2019\u00a0 Of course, I hadn\u2019t; I had just dismissed the idea too quickly.\u00a0 Once on the right track, I was still a bit behind, because I apparently had not read the descriptions carefully enough the first time to realize that the ghost had the key to the door, and I assumed that I had simply lost it.\u00a0 After working out what had happened (and restarting the game, which was short), I was finally able to retrieve the key from the ghost by typing \u2018drop key\u2019 when I didn\u2019t actually have the key, which was kind of cool (the ghost dropped it itself, three turns later), and then was able to lock it out and open the door.\u00a0 In my defense, a ghost being blocked by a door is not something one typically imagines would be true of ghosts, when they have the whole \u2018incorporeal\u2019 thing going for them.\u00a0 But I suppose if you\u2019re substantial enough to pick up a key, you\u2019re substantial enough to get blocked by a door.<\/p>\n

Overall, I would rate this puzzle as \u2018satisfying\u2019, which for a game of this size is basically perfect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi!\u00a0 I\u2019m Lucian Smith, and back in the day (that day being a Tuesday in 1997), I wrote a puzzle that ended up winning that year\u2019s XYZZY Award for Best Individual Puzzle: the language puzzle in\u00a0The Edifice\u00a0(which also won Best Puzzles and that year\u2019s IF Comp).\u00a0 Since then, I\u2019ve mostly dabbled or collaborated on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119,2],"tags":[30,51,118,155,156,107,157,50,108,158,19,136,141],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}