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[Bookclub] [Late] Puzzles in _John's_Fire_Witch_
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
connect below that node can be completed.
You'll need to configure your newsreader to a fixed-width font for it
to make sense.
Game Start
|
'----------------'------'--------'
| | |
Have Find the Find the
a dream Batteries flashlight
| | |
| '-------'-------'
| |
| Enter the underground
| |
\ '-------'--------'-------------'
\ | | |
| Find and use Find and use Cross
| the card the wand the pit
| | | |
| | | '------'-----'
| | | | |
Open Solve the | Solve Find 6
the vault magic | the swinging deadly
| archway | platform sins
'-----'-------' | | |
| | Kill Beat the
Destroy | the goblin devil
the demon | | |
| | | |
'---------'-------------' | |
| | |
'-------------------------' |
| |
Retrieve |
the ring |
| |
'-------------'---------------------'
|
Cross the bridge
|
|
Destroy the
Ice Wizard
As you can see, if I had elongated it vertically, it would form a shape
very similar to that of California. This is obviously the secret to
John's design. ;-)
There is a nice feeling of openness in _John's_Fire_Witch_. After solving
the game, I was sure that finding out how to use the card was a huge
bottleneck in the game. But surprisingly, there are roughly three puzzles
open to the player at all times, until just before the end of the game.
Many puzzle-game authors strive for a nice balance between linearity and
freedom, and I think _John's_Fire_Witch_ is just about perfect on this
score.
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.
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.
3. It's difficult but possible to lose necessary items. Fair enough, I
say.
Individual puzzles:
Have a dream:
This is an unoriginal idea, but it is fit well into the story. I got an
feeling of reliving whatever John had gone through. It is well-clued by
John's diary, and the "you are really tired" messages. Nobody is likely
to miss this one.
You have to wait around 150 turns before you can have the dream, but even
on replays, there is enough stuff you can do before having the dream that
it doesn't amount to a waste of time.
Find the batteries, Find the flashlight:
The ever-popular items hidden in obvious places. It seems like a good
idea to have a few of these to get a player started.
Enter the underground:
It's a light-source puzzle, and the light-source isn't hard to
find.
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.
Find and use the wand:
This is a nice contrast to the magic card. You know how to use the wand
right away, but what on earth it will be useful for isn't apparent. Many
semi-successful attempts at using the wand are necessary to figure out
what it does.
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.
Open the vault:
An impossible puzzle until you have the dream, and a trivial puzzle
*after* you have the dream. This might not have worked, but there is
clever text which guides players into realizing that they will eventually
find the combination.
The puzzle plot is skewed again by this puzzle, because solving it
releases the demon, which cannot be killed unless the magic archway is
understood -- A possible sticking point.
Solve the magic archway:
This is the first time many things must be understood at once before
success (a property of this game that gets repeated many times). The
properties of the prison cells and the magic card must be known before a
solution is possible. Some players may luck into this solution and still
not understand the prison cells (as I did), but that gets taken care of
later on (see the demon).
Destroy the demon:
Knowledge about the world, learned by solving earlier puzzles, is used to
dispatch a nasty nether-worlder. It's well clued that "movement" is the
solution to this puzzle, saving the player many possible hours of wasted
time. The player isn't even given enough time to "examine the demon".
It's possible to avoid being killed by the demon for a long time without
ever figuring out how to destory him. This might have caused problems for
a lesser puzzle designer, but John dodges this one by making the ring
unattainable except by destroying the demon. He also reuses the arch, the
card, and the prison cell in the process.
Incorrect teleportation can get you into a very short-lived unwinnable
state. Hiding all over the map using your magic card could presumably
create a long-lived unwinnable state.
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.
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.
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".
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.
Retrieve the ring:
This one is a "restore or undo" puzzle. But that's okay, because it's
still hard to figure out the solution. You're helped if you try using the
wand anywhere near the vial.
This puzzle could be improved by giving the gas inside the vial some
color. At least some players might have solved it without dying first.
Cross the bridge:
This is more a relief than a puzzle. The player's been carrying around
these darn gems for the entire game thinking that they're red herrings.
Destroy the wizard:
It's hard to see how a player could guess that the solution to this
puzzle would work, but it's a fun and likely think for the player
to try through experimentation. It's nice that the player gets no
consideration at all from the Ice Wizard, even after he's been
imprisoned.
The ending of the game is excellent, and only lacks a sequal. I'll be the
first to download it when it's released.
--
char NeilCerutti[]= "cerutti@together.net";