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

[buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)]

In article <slrn8h3f48.7f.cerutti@fiad06.norwich.edu>,
Neil Cerutti <cerutti@together.net> wrote:
>I think _John's_Fire_Witch_ is an excellent puzzle game, and here's some
>armchair analysis and opinion. 
>The following is a "puzzle plot" of the game. The beginning of the game is
>at the top, and the end of the game is at the bottom. The nodes are text
>describing some facet of the game that must be solved bofore the things

I guess it'll be clear why I can't offer as interesting an opinion.

>But this plot doesn't account for everything. There are some unwinnable
>states reachable in _John's_Fire_Witch_, one very easy to reach.
>
>  1. If you cross the pit before finding the magic card, you are stuck.
>     This has been accounted for by placing the card in the same spot as
>     the batteries, which you must have found by that point.

Oh, that's why I didn't get anywhere in JFW.

>  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)

"It will be chancy" hardly meant "you'll only be able to do it once".
I can see why it would be intended to mean that, and why a player could
take it that way, but it's a bit arbitrary, and wasn't how I took it.
(I took it as meaning: save here, you idiot.)

>Find 6 deadly sins:
>
>  Extremely easy, especially if any time at all was spent early in the game
>  poking through John's crap. It does require a small leap to figure out
>  what the devil means by "collect the sins".

Does this require you to restore since you can only cross the pit once?
Or is there some other way back across?

From reading your description, I question whether the spread of
available puzzles at each moment is good design, since so many
are unsolveable at any given moment.  This has always been my
central problem with many adventure games--especially commercial
ones, since it tends to put you out of problem solving mode (the
problems may not be soluable) and instead into try-stuff-mode...
which quickly leads to using everything on everything else.

Sean