What's the best adventure game puzzle? (spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

My wife and I love to play adventure games. She’s not a big gamer and these are the games that we can truly play together, without competing.

We’ve played a ton of them and I’ve been trying to think what the ultimate puzzle has been in our experience. Post your favorites and the solutions.

For us, it comes from the fantastic Secret of Monkey Island 2: Lechuck’s Revenge .

In the game, you have to get 4 map pieces. One of them belonged to Rapp Scallion, a cook on a ship. Here is what you have to do to get his puzzle piece.

  1. Get into his crypt(he’s dead, by the way).

  2. To do this, you have to get the key from “Stan’s used coffin” store.

  3. To do this, you must nail Stan into a coffin so he won’t stop you from taking the key.

  4. To do this, you must get the nails and hammer from the Carpenter on Scab Island.

  5. To do this, you must, saw off the peg leg of the Pirate. When the Carpenter leaves, you can take his hammer and nails.

  6. After getting the key, you must enter the crypt and open Rapp Scallion’s coffin. But Guybrush won’t do this unless you know which one is his.

  7. To identify it, you must use the “Book of Pirate Quotations” and find Rapp Scallion’s famous quote.

  8. To get his book, you must swap it(Indiana Jones style) with another book, since the Governor of Phatt Island has it.

  9. After identifying the correct coffin and opening it, you find that Rapp Scallion is nothing but ashes(he died a long time ago).

  10. To raise him from the dead, you must get some Ash-2-Life from the Voo-Doo Lady’s hut. Of course, you must bring some of Rapp’s ashes to her so she can make some.

  11. After getting the Ash-2-Life and bringing Rapp to life, you must go and check to see if the gas is on in his “Hotdog Hut”.

  12. After turning off the gas in his hut, you must ressurect him again and he will give you the map piece.

There are so many things to do for this one map piece, it is brilliant. What makes it my favorite overall puzzle is that all of the actions required for the puzzle are logical and “solveable” if you think about it.

Brilliant game and brilliant puzzle.

What are your favorites and why?

2

There are several puzzles that I thought were clever, but one in particular tickled my funny bone. In The Longest Journey you see April’s childhood toy, Constable Guybrush a monkey who talks and plays the drums in her closet. It seems like only an Easter egg, but later on he turns out very useful.

At one point you need to slip in the fire door of a theater to meet an NPC and advance the plot. To do this, you have to get another not so intelligent NPC out of the way.

What you do, is use the policeman’s hat you just acquired, put it on some garbabe bags, so that it casts a shadow that looks like a policeman with gun drawn. Set fire to some nearby garbage, wind up Guybrush and put him on the garbage heap too, and he’ll do his routine. “Hey, hey you! Hands up, and do the monkey!” This will cause the NPC, Freddy to dance because he thinks a policeman is making him do so and you can slip into the theater unchallenged.

I’m eagerly looking forward to the next installment of this series, DreamFall. Funcom makes the game, and it has also put out Anarchy Online.

3

In Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guild to the Galaxy, Arthur needs to get a Babel fish from a fish dispensing machine and into his ear. Okay, push the button on the machine.

Oops, the fish goes flying through a hole in the wall, under a hook.

Take off the dressing gown, hang it on the hook, and press the dispenser button again.

The fish goes flying through the air, slides down a sleeve, and drops into a drain.

Cover the drain with Arthur’s towel and press the dispenser button again.

The fish goes flying through the air, slides down a sleeve, lands on the towel, then is picked up by a cleaning bot.

Take Ford’s satchel and set it in front of the bot’s exit door and press the dispenser button again.

The fish goes flying through the air, slides down a sleeve, lands on the towel, gets picked up by the cleaning bot, which smacks into Ford’s satchel. This causes the fish to fly though the air again and is picked up by a second cleaning bot.

Set the junk mail on Ford’s satchel and press the dispenser button again.

The fish goes flying through the air, slides down a sleeve, lands on the towel, gets picked up by the bot, which smacks into Ford’s satchel. This causes the fish and the junk mail to fly through the air. The former heads straight for Arthur’s ear while the latter keeps the second bot busy.

4

I was wondering how long it would be before someone would post yours, Lute.

5

Funny thing is, that’s virtually the only adventure game I ever played.

6

Spider and Web is a short but excellent game with some good traditional puzzles built around a central puzzle, which is the best I’ve ever come across. I won’t give anything away other than to say that the central puzzle involves a clever plot twist and change of perspective. I highly recommend it.

7

The Monkey Island series are possibly the funniest and best adventure games available ever. Doesn’t matter that a 386 could play them - go get them! In the days of our 286, our family also had great fun with the Space Quest series. Getting Roger Wilco to fix the shield generator, saving him with the can of dehydrated water… :slight_smile:

I never liked Hero/Kings Quest quite as much (not as funny as SQ, and it always included a lot of running around different places, and waiting so you were in the right place at a certain time of day), but I can recommend Peasants Quest. :smiley:

8

While we’re on the subject of Monkey Island II (oh, what a fantastic game), I’ll have to mention the whole voodoo showdown with LeChuck at the very end. Brilliant.

Also, I have a soft spot in my heart for the drama that leads up to this mugshot in Day of the tentacle:.

Basically, you nominate your dead mummy friend to a beauty contest and win by slapping on a bowl of spaghetti to his skull, inserting a horse’s teeth to his face and adding a laughing box to his belly.

9

This another fangirl “Three cheers for Monkey Island” post from me.

Gosh, what a great series.

My name is Guybrush Threepwood, and I want to be a mighty pirate!

10

I’m Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate!

11

Yet another Monkey Island puzzle, but from the first one.

Guybrush has to become a fencing master, but finds out that what’s important is not skill with the blade, but skill with wit: if one can cuttingly insult one’s opponent well enough, victory with the blade is then easy.

So Guybrush has to wander through the forest and face several different pirates, all of whom taunt him in different ways. He then has to take these learned taunts and wander through the forest again, using these learned taunts so that he can learn the correct riposte to these taunts.

Having done this, he then faces the Sword Master- who will hit him with a bunch of new taunts. But each of these new taunts is riposted by one of the responses that he learned from the random wandering.

For example:

Pirate taunt: “My handkerchief will wipe up your blood!”

is parried by: “So you got that job as a janitor, after all.”

which is just as effective against the Pirate Master saying “My name is feared in every dirty corner of this island!”

Likewise,

Pirate taunt: “You fight like a dairy famer.”

is parried by: “How appropriate. You fight like a cow.”

which is just as effective against the Pirate Master saying “I will milk every last drop of blood from your body!”
Just an ingenious - and hillarious - puzzle.