Is it really good puzzle design to make the player exhaust all their variables anyway? A good puzzle should require thinking and logic to complete, not trial and error. That said, I understand your concern. When the player does get stuck, they shouldn't have too many variables overwhelming them. But of the two extremes, I'd rather the player be overwhelmed by possibilities than being able to figure out a puzzle in five minutes simply by trying all fifteen possibilities. But managing variable quantity is an important part of adventure design. Cutting off areas that are of no more use would be a step in the right direction.

I'd also like to see designers begin to use an auto-grab system where the character automatically picks up all relevant items in a particular area. It'd certainly stop the player from constantly revisiting areas in hopes of finding that magical widget that will solve all their problems.

Adding new stuff when the player is stuck may not get them unstuck, but it would help make the game feel more entertaining.

I'm not suggesting that the difficulty be taken away from graphic adventure games. But if the player can't figure out that he needs to disolve his pills in water to get over his hang-over, why not provide an equally difficult puzzle involving getting the water to work for a cold shower? Again, you're going to have to face a lot of puzzles throughout an adventure. But in some cases, putting giving the player two solutions to the same puzzle will increase the odds that the player can "get" one of them. Does it increase the number of variables? Certainly. Are there ways of managing the quantity of variables? Yeah, there are.

You're not going to predict precisely how the player will react, but a good designer should be able to figure it out with reasonable certainty. People will use their logic. If you can put yourselves in the shoes of someone who hasn't designed the game, and anticipate how they would interpret the information you give them, then you should be able to design a game successfully. I'm not really a fan of integrating stealth or action into graphic adventure games. Adventure games are about the puzzles, and when they stop being about that, then how are they different from any other genre? It's just a matter of making smarter puzzles.

It's not a hopeless cause. Look at how successfully Zelda implements puzzles into its design. If that kind of intelligence in puzzle design is used, albeit a different type, then I would imagine the game would ellicit relatively few complaints.

And Ocarina of Time is a classic because Navi repeats the same two phrases over and over.

A game is rarely a classic because of its flaws. If Monkey Island 2 has serious design flaws (I couldn't tell you for certain, it's been too long since I've played it), then that was a detriment to the experience. I remember loving the atmosphere and writing of the game. Not sure about the puzzles. Don't remember much about them, which might be a less-than-good sign.

Again, not knowing what you're doing for days is not a good thing. Sure, you feel good when you finally figure it out, but what about the DAYS you spend frustrated? To compensate for something that frustrating for that long, it'd have to be nothing short of pure ectasy. Never got that pumped about a puzzle solution. Frankly, those few moments of "I did it" are never worth the days you spent trying to figure it out. And you can get the same feeling whenever you cleverly arrive at a solution. Maybe less relief, but relief is merely the reprieve from suffering.

I'm not sure why having "I KILL YOU WITH ILLOGIC, STUPID ADVENTURE PLAYER" puzzles is a good thing.

Final Fantasy games are not adventure games. They're RPGs. If you want to get more specific, they're called Japanese RPGs or Eastern RPGs. You're the first person I've heard refer to them as adventure RPGs. Same for arcade adventure. Those games are called action-adventure, and even then, they're not all that closely linked to graphic adventure titles. They both involve exploration, and some action adventure games have puzzles (though usually not the same type), but that's about it. Text adventures are dead (with the occasional exception, tributes like Thy Dungeonman from Home Star Runner, for example) and seem to have been replaced by graphic adventures. Are these necessarily logical? No. But that's the language gamers tend to use, so in order to communicate effectively with each other, those are the labels we use.

Dunno why I felt compelled to nitpick.

Eh, sort of. There are a lot of hybrid genres emerging, but you still get a lot of games that fit pretty squarely in a genre. Also, as new genres emerge, we create new genre names for them to fit in. Fifteen years ago, did anyone have any idea what a "stealth action" game was? Exactly.

Uh, thank you for thanking me for posting!

I'm definitely going to get Sam and Max. The difficult is... how? Maybe a GameTap subscription, maybe buy the game directly, maybe as a birthday gift for my brother... regardless of how I do it, I also have to get someone to use their credit card in my place. So... who knows. I think I'll do a detailed analysis of Sam and Max, see how it stands up both in terms of writing and design.

But if you didn't try to solve the problems in the way I suggested, that's not necessarily a bad thing. The more potential solutions that are out there in the world, the more likely it is that those problems can be solved. I'll see if I can figure out what you guys are doing in the game. When? Uh, who knows.

It's too bad, because Dreamfall and many Final Fantasy games have very rewarding gameplay and stories that are worth seeing through to the end. The way I figure it, by the time you get to a particularly frustrating part, you should have figured out by then whether or not it's worth getting past. In a game like Final Fantasy VII, what with its poor translation and basic gameplay, the answer was a firm no. In a game like Final Fantasy VIII or Dreamfall, definitely, absolutely, totally worth working through. Get a walkthrough, get a friend to give a second opinion, but those games are worth it.

I don't think you can really expect a designer to be perfect, especially with the quantity of content that's in a game. The designer will mess up at some point. But the mark of a good game is one that will make you want to see it through, even when you aren't liking what you're doing at the moment.

Just consider buying the game. It's a necessary inconvenience to play the game. If there are a few necessary inconveniences within the design of an otherwise awesome game, so what?