Re: [Bookclub] [Late] Puzzles in _John's_Fire_Witch_

["Mark Hatfield" <Mark.Hatfield@axom.com>]

Interesting post.  Damn thorough.  Here's my 2 cents on some of the puzzles.

>  2. If you use the swinging platform before proceeding south from the
> southern side of the pit, you will never be able to get to the blue
> crystal grotto. You will not even know why you are stuck. This
> happened to me both times I played the game, last month and five years
> ago, and I had to consult a walkthrough both times to find out what I
> had done wrong. This is a very bad situation, encouraged by a poor
> room description south of the pit, which leads most players to head
> west. It could be solved by allowing the player a second chance at
> jumping the pit, to use the swinging platform in reverse, or by
> improving the room description to call the player's attention south.
>


This is a devilish one, and possibly the game's only real bug.  The other
unwinnable situations are hinted at by the game, or at least right after the
fact so that a simple Undo will remedy.  But THIS situation can be walked
into simply by exploring new locations in the wrong order, and there is
never any indication that something is amiss.  The walkthru is the about the
only recourse for this one.

>
>Find and use the card:
>
>  The magic card is an excellent and original idea. An excellent property
>  of it is that you cannot solve it immediately. You must explore the
>  caverns a bit before the card can be used. It is an excellent twist on
>  the `teleporter' puzzle. You need a magic word, which is written on the
>  card, to use it. More complexity could have been added if the magic word
>  were hidden somehow.
>


The magic word was hidden, in the diary.  I too liked this puzzle, and the
fact that the full capability of the card was revealed little by little as
you went along.  The rhetorical question about reading the diary is classic.

>
>Cross the pit:
>
>  The syntax is carefully chosen here to disallow player's accidently
>  jumping the pit. A specific command of "jump pit" is required, and clued
>  well. I call it parse-leading.
>
>  John effectively gives the player more information than I they are
>  entitled to (don't carry many items and you won't be able to jump the pit
>  more than once), but in this case it was a good idea. Players who have
>  solved the mystery of the magic card will have more confidence. A minor
>  red-herring that is handled well is player's attempting to use the board
>  to bridge the pit.


I thought John did an excellent job of carefully choosing his words to lead
the player to proper syntax for their commands.  The writing was very
efficient and effective in this regard.

>Solve the magic archway:
>
>Destroy the demon:
>


The demon/archway puzzle was one of the coolest I've solved by myself.  I
had done quite a bit of tinkering with the archway and cells, and when the
demon presented himself I knew just what to do.  When it worked it was
gratifying.

>Solve the swinging platform:
>
>  This is an exhibition of clever parse-leading. there are no standard
>  commands used to get through this obstacle, but they aren't hard to
>  figure out, either.

I liked this one too.  Straight out of White Plume Mountain I'm betting.

>
>Kill the goblin:
>
>  This is a poor puzzle, but it's easy, so nobody minds. You get a key to
>  the safe from him. I thinks its kind of boring to have a vault and a safe
>  in the same game.


Well, I thought it was a good puzzle, and not so easy, since I had long ago
dismissed the board as a red-herring and forgot all about it.  One man's
meat is another man's poison I guess.


>Beat the devil:
>
>  This is a really hard, and somewhat unfair puzzle. It's stated flatly by
>  the devil that you'll die if you give him the bag with less than 7 sins
>  in it. Once that suicidal action has been undertaken (out of frustration,
>  perhaps) the solution is obvious, though. This is saved by the
>  high degree of satisfaction attained by achieving the solution.
>


I liked this puzzle a lot too, and I also found it very satisfying to solve.
I suppose it could be labeled unfair, but I'm a player who gets a lot of
entertainment out of doing all the things the game hints at as being bad to
do, just to see what happens.  Save/Restore and Undo features are there for
a reason, and trivialities like PC death are usually minor setbacks.  So I
didn't mind turning in the bag one sin light (since I'd probably turned it
in empty when I first got it and was warned to fill it before turning it
in).

Mark