text:
This list of questions to ask a wedding photographer is based on our years of experience, detailing our most commonly asked questions and our answers to these questions.
We recommend referring to our list of Questions To Ask A Wedding Photographer (or copy the questions that you feel are most important to you) and bring them to your meetings with potential photographers for your wedding. Some photographers will provide some of the answers to these questions on their websites. Don't be afraid to ask these important questions. It's in your interest to get the answers!
Questions To Ask A Wedding Photographer
Yes, we spend all of our time dedicated to our photography and film clients. Being photographers and filmmakers is our full-time vocation, we don't do any other part-time work and we love what we do! NOTE: A part-time photographer won't necessarily provide you with an inferior service. Established full-time photographers like us are full-time for a reason. We provide a dedicated, client-focused, exceptional service, and won't be burning the midnight oil editing photos while in the back of my mind is getting up for my 'day job' the following morning!
Discreet and relaxed, combining mostly natural/candid 'documentary style' photos with a selection of classic and captivating 'wow-factor' photos of the newly-weds.
Relaxed, friendly, professional and fast. We'll blend seamlessly into the background, taking photos of the event as it unfolds. At key moments we'll take a more 'hands-on' approach, offering direction where necessary to ensure the photos are taken quickly and smoothly.
We create photos that are timeless, natural and unique, avoiding the use of 'fashionable' editing techniques and software/Instagram-style filters that can quickly look dated, focussing instead on clean, colourful photography that will stand the test of time.
Read our informative guide 'How To Choose A Photographer – 5 Essential Things To Check', then narrow your selection down to a handful of favourite photographers and arrange to meet them one at a time. Make sure you meet the actual photographer who'll be taking your photos, not their assistant, salesperson or studio owner. This is especially important if you're at a wedding fair and the photographer isn't available as they're shooting photos at a wedding. Take away some details, but arrange to meet the actual photographer and ask them a few of my 'questions to ask a wedding photographer' at a later date. Don't ever gamble by committing to booking when you only meet the sales rep at a wedding fayre! It's crucial that you trust and get along with your photographer. This means you can rest assured your photographer will create the photos you want. It's important that not only should you like the photos, but you should like the photographer! Bear in mind you'll be in each other's company for several hours on your wedding day!
Overall, we agree that the best professional photographers do cost a lot of money, let's not pretend great photographers are cheap. But being a skilled photographer takes a lot of investment, both in time and equipment. We carry over £20,000 of equipment to most weddings. We work 50-60 hour weeks, editing thousands of photos, and a full wedding film takes several days to complete. Add to that insurance, taxes, advertising, albums, shipping, etc. and you'll appreciate why paying for professional photography costs money. It also explains why you generally 'get what you pay for'. Photographers offering budget photography tend to work part-time, use cheaper equipment, have less experience and generally create pictures which don't compare favourably with higher-end photographers.
There are no hard and fast rules here – if you're not getting married for another 2 or 3 years then take your time, do lots of research, be sure to refer to the questions on this page and still take your pick of the very best photographers. As your big day draws nearer, then your options will become increasingly limited, particularly if you're getting married on a Saturday during the busier summer season. Your first choice photographer might not be available if you wait too long. We have a varied client base, with some couples booking two years in advance, most about 12 – 18 months in advance, and each month we usually have at least one last-minute booking. We shoot between 40 and 50 weddings every year, but they're not all held on a Saturday (the favourite day of the week to get married is Saturday), so there's usually a few Saturdays throughout the year we'll still be available. Most couples agree that when you find your photographer, you'll most likely know you've found the one for you. At that point don't wait too long to book; arrange a meeting, ask the questions in this guide, and if you're happy then go ahead and book. It's another thing ticked off your 'to-do list' and means you can move on to arranging something else. If we're unavailable for your date, we'll recommend colleagues who may be available who we know will provide the same quality of photos in a style similar to ours.
Yes, we'll travel anywhere to photograph a wedding! Travel and overnight accommodation costs may apply if your venue is quite far away from Edinburgh, but usually, if you're within 30 miles of Edinburgh we won't charge extra.
'Shoot and burn' is a term used to describe photographing a wedding and supplying the images to the client without any editing or post-processing done to the pictures. 'Shoot and burn' is usually cheaper than mid-to-high-end photographer prices due to involving a lot less work than a high-end photographer. The photos are often handed over regardless of any errors – forget about correcting poor composition, bad lighting, pimples, doing colour correction, etc. What was shot is what you get. Ask your photographer to confirm exactly what you will receive. If you're having a smaller 'off-peak' ceremony, you're on a budget and do your research carefully, there are some bargains to be had. Try and get an experienced photographer with a really good portfolio of images in a style that you like and ask if your photos will be in this style. Ensure you receive a contract and make sure you compare the price with other photographer's prices to ensure you really are getting a good deal. Like most things in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Ask some of the questions from this page and you will be better informed. Remember, your big day is a once-in-a-lifetime-occasion, make sure your photographer is up to the job, regardless of price.
Yes, I will personally photograph your event, with my wife Claire usually working alongside me as my fabulous 'second photographer'. We don't outsource or cover more than one event per day unless we're covering a particularly large event and require additional coverage. From initial contact to delivering the completed albums, we take care of it. NOTE: Make sure the person who is going to be your photographer is named in your contract and make sure the questions to ask a wedding photographer are answered by the person who will definitely be your photographer!
Research, make sure you browse our website, Facebook page and our online reviews. By this stage, you'll know if you like our style of photography. Contact us to arrange a meeting and take it from there. We don't do high-pressure sales, there's no obligation to book – we meet, have a chat, and a drink and even if you don't book us we guarantee you'll come away from our meeting with some useful information about your venue and choosing a photographer! Compare us to other photographers, choosing appropriate questions to ask a wedding photographer from this page for your meeting.
Since 2006.
We've photographed and filmed over 400 weddings in Scotland!
We don't offer a 'one-package-fits-all' – we're happy to tailor coverage of your day to ensure you don't pay more than you need to. If you have a big budget, and you want the very best service, photos and albums available then we can certainly work with you. But our services aren't exclusive, and we'll do all we can to cater for smaller or midweek events on a smaller budget. View our wedding photography packages and prices.
Yes. We regularly update our website and blog pages. All the photos and videos seen on this website are personally created by us.
Most of our prices provide two photographers as standard (Claire and Jonathon). Two photographers provide optimal coverage of your wedding day.
A second photographer is really useful as they provide you with more images and a different perspective. When we work together, we can usually cover both you and your partner's preparations. During the marriage ceremony we can cover two angles/viewpoints simultaneously, without needing to walk around (often, moving during the ceremony isn't possible due to the layout of the room). During your drinks reception, one of us can cover the guests, capturing those candid moments while the newly-weds are having their photos taken. One of the best questions to ask a photographer is how they prefer to work. You can get excellent results with a single photographer, but almost always having a second photographer will capture more of the day and from different viewpoints. Bear in mind that many photographers offering a 'second photographer' as part of their standard packages are offering someone who will spend most, if not all of the day, working as a photographer's assistant. This means carrying the primary photographer's bags, moving tripods/flashes, etc., checking off the photo list and other assistant duties. Check what is on offer, as a photographer's assistant is not the same as a second photographer!
Yes, we think so and we've been photographing and filming since 2006 and seen it all. On the day if timings run late, if your beautiful old classic car breaks down, if a guest falls ill, or one of our cameras malfunctions, it'll be okay (we carry spare equipment!). We're there to document the day, not to control the day, and if for any reason Plan A isn't working out, we'll move on to Plan B. We're there to work with you on the day. On the very rare occasion there's a problem on our side of things, you most likely won't even know about it. Otherwise, as a team, in the unlikely event of any other problems, we'll discuss it with you to ensure the rest of the day goes without any problems.
We have full cover including Public Liability Insurance, Professional Indemnity insurance and all of our camera equipment is comprehensively insured. NOTE: All suppliers should be insured in case anything goes wrong. This is one of the important questions to ask a wedding photographer or supplier! Some venues may insist that all suppliers are insured, don't leave it too late to find out your photographer isn't fully covered. Is your budget photographer price too good to be true? Ask to see original copies of their insurance certificates. If they take a chance by omitting insurance, what other shortcuts are they taking? It is recommended that you also buy comprehensive wedding insurance, as your big day usually involves major investment so why take any chances?
We use top of the range Canon cameras, Canon L-series prime lenses and Canon RT series flashes. There's a bit of a myth that says 'it's not about the camera or equipment'. We agree with this a little, but suffice to say that we couldn't create the photos we create using a basic camera and cheap zoom lens. We could create something similar, but it wouldn't be as good as we know we can craft with our current gear. Do you want photos of a marriage ceremony shot in a candlelit room during winter? Use of flash will kill the atmosphere. Try shooting without flash using a standard zoom lens and basic camera body (the standard wedding photographer equipment for many professionals). You'll receive grainy, often blurry photos. By the time you see the pictures, it'll be too late. Think about it this way, the equipment we use is an investment to give us the tools to do our job properly, promptly, with minimal fuss, in all weather. Our gear can take a beating (ever tried walking down a narrow castle staircase with two cameras slung over your shoulders? Cheap equipment would be broken in a day!). Yes, we take the photos, it's our critical eye that decides what to shoot, but our cameras and lenses are essentially precision instruments enabling us to get the results that we know you want and will love.
Yes, as experienced photographers we're happy to meet and discuss this with you. We do have our signature style, noted above, but we're flexible and accommodating.
Yes, we discuss this with you about a month before your big day. You're welcome to share your ideas, and we'll certainly offer our input and give you a few ideas of our own! NOTE: Make this one of the questions to ask a wedding photographer when you meet, and treat the reply 'just trust me' as a warning that you might be dealing with someone who isn't too keen on deviating from their comfort zone. There's a fine line between adhering to a definitive photo list to ensure you get pictures of all of your nearest and dearest, and allowing your photographer the freedom to be creative and capture those candid shots (which can often be some of the best photos of the day). Ask the question, and then nearer the day get down to the finer details.
All photos are shot in colour, edited then duplicated and converted to black and white. All our clients receive all photos in colour, plus all the photos in black and white. Some photographers choose a selection to provide in black and white. However, we feel that individual images which we prefer to be black and white you might prefer in colour, or vice versa. So have the best of both worlds and receive everything in colour and everything in black and white, at no extra cost to you.
Of course! we currently have more than 200,000 photos of entire weddings in our galleries. Let's meet, have a chat, and we can show you the most relevant pictures. There's a chance we've already photographed at your venue! We can also show you sample albums containing full wedding days, as delivered to satisfied clients – not just an album with a selection of our favourite photos.
We won't know for sure until we discuss this with you, but the answer is most likely a resounding yes! We've photographed and filmed weddings of every size and at every location imaginable – castles, city-centre hotels, remote Scottish beaches and Registry Offices in Edinburgh and Lothians. The smallest ceremony had just four of us present (Bride, Groom, Claire and Jonathon), and the largest, a traditional Asian ceremony, had over 300 guests. We've photographed Indian, Muslim, civil, Humanist, Roman Catholic and same-sex ceremonies…you get the idea!
Possibly…if not and it's not too far from Edinburgh we'll pay a visit in advance of the big day. Otherwise, we'll thoroughly research the venue and where possible arrive earlier on the day to check out locations for photos.
Possibly…we always introduce ourselves to suppliers on the day, and we're great at working seamlessly with everyone. Don't take our word for it, check out the positive reviews kindly written by our clients!
We don't offer a 'one-size fits all' package. Click here for details of our packages and contact us to check our availability. Minimum coverage is one hour, extending to full-day coverage, with our all-day package including a pre-wedding photo shoot.
Absolutely! The packages on our website are based on the service we've provided to clients for over a decade. If none of the packages tick all the right boxes then, please do contact us, tell us about your wedding plans and let's have a chat to get you the exact amount of coverage you require. We're here to fit into your plans, not the other way round.
Yes, we do. We prefer to call this a 'pre-wedding photo shoot', as most of our clients have been engaged for many months (or years!), others call it an 'e-shoot'. The service is the same, though – we meet a few weeks before your big day and spend an hour or two shooting a range of photos of the two of you. We get to know each other a little bit and you get to experience a professional photoshoot. We guarantee any fears or worries you had about the photography side of getting married will vanish by the time we've completed our photoshoot!
We currently require a deposit of £300. Payment of the deposit is due at the time of booking. Until we receive the deposit payment and booking form, your date is not reserved, and we reserve the right to accept other booking enquiries for your date until your booking is confirmed. The balance is payable one month before you get married.
Yes, we can accept payment via instalments. We're happy to discuss this with you and we can even set up reminders for instalment payments.
We accept payment via bank transfers and credit/debit card payments via PayPal.
If we haven't met and all communication is done remotely, cancellation by you within seven days of booking to receive a full refund of your deposit. If we've met and you cancel, the deposit is forfeited. Cancellation by you beyond seven days means you forfeit your deposit. If you move your wedding date due to unforeseen circumstances, then we're usually happy to switch dates (subject to availability) and transfer your deposit to the new date. In the very unlikely event of cancellation by us then we'll refund in full all the money you've paid.
As soon as you tell us you'd like to book us we'll email you a copy of our contract. The contract contains the terms and conditions of business. To book us you sign and date the contract and send a copy back to us, along with your deposit payment. As soon as we receive your signed contract and deposit payment we'll email you a booking confirmation/receipt for the deposit payment. NOTE: Don't book a photographer or any other supplier who won't provide a written contract.
We have a network of photographer colleagues who are full-time professionals and are our first contact should an emergency arise. Fortunately, in the years we've been photographers we've not yet had to call upon a colleague in an emergency, but if we do you can rest assured you're in safe hands.
About a month before your big day arrives we'll email the details that we need – typically timings of the day to ensure we're in the right place at the right time and the list of group photos. We'll detail what's required and when you supply the information we'll check it and discuss with you anything that might not be an obvious problem; for example, your venue might suggest timings for shooting the group photos which don't allow for the number of groups you'd like photographed. We'll discuss this with you and make suggestions if we feel it will make the day progress more smoothly. Part of the benefit of booking us as your photographers is that we'll do all we can to ensure your day goes smoothly, including discussing with you on the day and making sure you have the final say in any changes to the schedule.
For as long or as little as it takes to get the job done! If you book us for all-day coverage, then we'll be there to cover all the main parts of your day, from start to finish (pre-ceremony preparations through to dancing) with no clock-watching. If your package includes coverage of the preparations, we'll arrive with enough time to get the shots needed and move on to the guests arriving at the ceremony venue. We'll discuss the timings with you well in advance of the wedding day. If you have a good idea of the timings at our initial meeting, we'll advise you whether your requirements are practical, or if we need to tweak the timings or amount of coverage slightly to ensure you get maximum coverage in the time allocated.
We will dress smartly – no jeans, trainers or t-shirts! It might seem a trivial question to ask, but don't assume all photographers will make the effort to blend in with your guests. Trust me, we've recently filmed a ceremony where the photographer wore jeans, trainers and a shirt. To say the photographer looked out of place was putting it mildly! If having your photographer in suitable attire matters to you, make sure this is one of your questions to ask a wedding photographer!
Relax and enjoy being with your family and friends. The best advice we can give you is that if you feel relaxed when we take your photos, you'll appear relaxed in the photos, and you'll have a good memory of having the picture taken. If you feel awkward or uneasy when having your photo taken, then you'll feel the same when you look at the photo. So relax! In the unlikely event that you feel awkward or uncomfortable, we'll happily move, rearrange or do whatever is necessary to make you look wonderful. Factor in a little time in the schedule to allow for delays – if the bride arrives late, or there's a traffic jam on the way to the reception, or the speeches take longer than expected – you'll feel rushed and hassled, and that can show in your photos. Try and add time for a receiving line (or line-up as it is known) as this can act as a natural buffer if timings do slip, as you can always cancel a receiving line to allow more time for photos or mingling with your guests. Importantly, try and relax the night before you get married without having a lot of alcohol – get plenty of sleep and drink lots of water. Wedding day hangovers aren't ideal for looking great in your photos!
Delays can, and often do, happen at live events like weddings. A small delay here or there can add up over the course of the day, meaning the evening reception/cake cutting or first dance begins later than expected. We won't usually charge extra if there is a delay in the proceedings and we're happy to stay longer to ensure we cover the important parts of your day (cake cutting, first dances, etc.). Significant delays are very rare, but when they occasionally happen may result in a pro-rata charge for extra coverage, and we're happy to discuss this with you.
No, we don't expect you to provide us with food! Food is always appreciated but never expected. If your venue is in the middle of the countryside and there's not anywhere convenient for us to purchase food, then we would be very grateful if you arranged for us the main course and a soft drink. If you prefer not to provide food that is totally fine but bear in mind we will need to leave your venue to source something to eat and drink. NOTE: Some photographers insist on being fed when you are having your meal and have this as a clause in their contract. Our view is that being paid to work then insisting on food is a little bit cheeky. If you were having a kitchen or bathroom installed at home would you expect the fitter to have a 'feed me' clause written into the contract? We personally don't feel comfortable with that. Go with whatever makes you feel comfortable and make it one of your questions to ask a wedding photographer!
We use two identical cameras each, multiple lenses, multiple flash units…basically, we have at least 2 of everything we need to ensure we can continue taking photos.
It's fine, don't worry. It's unusual to have an entire day of non-stop rain. We always have a 'Plan B' for wet weather, as will most venues. If it's wet, and you prefer to stay indoors, then we're equipped to shoot beautiful newly-wed photos of you using our portable studio flash set-up. If you feel brave, we can head outside, even in the rain, and shoot a few photos of you walking together under an umbrella. Some of our favourite photos that we've taken have been shot in the rain, so be bold and if you're up for it, so are we! The biggest difference will be when it comes to shooting the family/group photos. If you have lots of family and guests present, and your venue has restricted space, it might be impossible to shoot a high-quality group photo of everyone. But we can still shoot pictures of the smaller groups of family and friends.
Yes, definitely. We actively encourage people to take photos, and we certainly have no issue with anyone present wanting to capture photos throughout the day. Some photographers object to guests taking pictures during the ceremony (and often during other parts of the day)…we disagree with this view, it's the most important day of your life, a professional photographer should be able to capture great photos even if guests want to shoot a few snaps of the newly-weds! We're there to capture a significant and historic occasion, including the guests who happen to be taking photos. As long as you're happy for guests to take pictures, we're happy, too! Your celebrant/minister/registrar/priest might refuse to allow photos during the ceremony, check with them before you book if you feel this is a problem.
As a guide, we recommend a maximum of ten groups and allow thirty minutes to create these photos. Bear in mind some people will be at the bar, at the toilet or having a cigarette and can slow things down a little, but thirty minutes for ten photos is a reasonable timescale. Ten group photos might not sound much, but if you start with a picture of everyone present, newly-weds with their families, newly-weds with siblings, one with grandparents, you still have five other combinations to choose. Don't go down the route of having every possible combination of every family member present, it's boring to shoot, it's boring for everyone present and takes ages to plough through. Keep it short, keep it enjoyable, and then get back to having a glass of champagne and relaxing. Make sure this is one of your questions to ask a wedding photographer, as every photographer is different.
Yes, we can provide a high-quality photo booth service. We'll provide everything needed, including backdrop and props. All the photo booth images are included with your wedding photos.
Possibly. We prefer to 'get it right' at the time we shoot each photo – location, poses, camera settings should ideally all be 'just right' when we take your photos. If your Best Man photobombs us, we'll re-shoot the photo rather than spend an hour editing the image in Photoshop. We recommended this as one of your questions to ask a wedding photographer, as you need to be aware many photographers will charge extra for extensive editing in Photoshop as it's a time-consuming process. Our advice? Get it right when you take the photo!
During the off-peak season, January – February, your photos can be ready to view online in about two weeks. For weddings taking place during the busier summer months and through to Christmas, we aim to have the gallery ready to see by your first month anniversary, though 8+ weeks can be necessary if we've been particularly busy/taking into account holidays. We always update you shortly after you get married, so you have a firm idea of when to expect your photos.
Yes – all of our clients will receive the high-resolution, watermark-free JPEG files of the photos. You'll receive a download link, via email, containing the photos in addition to your password-protected web gallery. We still retain the copyright to the photos that we create, and you're licensed to use the photos for personal use. This means that you can share your photos with family and friends, and you can display the photos on your own Facebook page, but you're not allowed to share the photos with venues, suppliers, etc. without our written permission. We're usually happy to share photos with other suppliers and venues, but we want to ensure that you and your photos are only ever shown at their very best, and also make sure appropriate credit is given when a photo we've created is displayed or used for commercial purposes.
You can usually expect to receive between 50 and 100 photos per hour of coverage. For all-day coverage (preparations in the morning until dancing in the evening), that usually means 600+ unique photos.
Yes, we do. Every single photo is individually checked and edited. The editing can include pimple removal, cropping, skin smoothing, and always includes image colour correction, contrast adjustment and sharpening. The final editing stage is making black and white copies of all of your photos.
We offer a comprehensive range of luxury wedding albums, all handmade right here in Scotland. We design your album using photos selected by you. Most couples receive more than 400 unique photos. We'll advise you on how to choose the photos for your album (explaining how to tell the story of your day with your selection). This allows you to include all of the photos that you really want to include in your album. Add this to your list of questions to ask a wedding photographer as other photographers prefer to dictate the entire album design process from start to finish. That's OK, and we're certainly happy to do this if you prefer to be less 'hands-on', but beware you might receive an album that is missing a few of your favourite photos, as your favourites might not be your photographer's favourites. When we place the order with the album manufacturer, it takes about 10 days for the completed album to arrive with you. UK delivery is included in the price, worldwide delivery is available for an additional charge.
As a guide, from choosing your photos to be used to design your album, to receiving your completed album typically takes between two and eight weeks. When you receive your download link to your photos, we'll provide guidance on how to choose the photos to go in your album. We think it's important that you choose the pictures, and we design the album. This ensures the album contains only the photos that you want. We'll then design your album and show you the layout via a PDF file. We're happy to tweak the design to ensure your complete satisfaction, and then the design is sent to the manufacturer. It then takes approximately 10 days for the finished albums to be completed. To summarise, the sooner you select the photos to go into the album, the sooner we can design it and send it to the manufacturer!
Yes, we can. A slideshow is a popular upgrade that can be edited to music that you choose, and if you prefer you can also choose the photos to appear in the slideshow, making the show completely personal and unique.
Yes, of course. Your photos will appear on your password-protected gallery which you're welcome to share with family and friends. You can order a range of gallery-quality prints directly from your gallery. All prints are created here in Scotland by the UK's leading print facility (trust me on how good these guys are, for seven years Jonathon ran a busy print and design business in Edinburgh, we know top quality when we see it!). Smaller prints are usually shipped same working day (Monday – Friday) for orders placed before 12 pm, with larger prints such as canvasses or framed prints typically taking up to seven working days. Our advice is not to let your photos sit hidden away on your hard drive or disk. Remember – one or two wall-mounted prints of you and your beloved on the best day of your life can make you smile on even the most miserable winter's day!
Possibly, as long as you're happy for us to do so. We usually post a small selection of our favourite photos of your day on our Facebook and Instagram pages as a little teaser within a few days of you getting married and follow this up with a blog post containing a wider selection of photos of your big day. Bear in mind that sharing a few photos is the key way to promote what we do to a wider audience, and we'd never share images which show you at anything other than their very best. Bear in mind that almost all of our couples' first impression of what we do is seeing someone else's photo/s on our website/social media/advertisement. We totally respect your privacy, and if you'd prefer to keep all of your photos private then we're happy to oblige!
Possibly. If you've indicated that you prefer total privacy then no, your photos will always remain private. Sometimes a bridal magazine or blog will approach us to ask for images. For example, they might be doing a feature on cakes and ask if we have any unique/unusual cake photos. Or they might require photos of shoes or a confetti shower. Or a blog writer reads our blog post about your wedding day and love it so much they'd like to feature it on their own blog. In these instances, we're usually happy to share photos, as we get credit for the photo (a credit is a link to our website or our name next to the image) which in turn is a great way to showcase our work to future clients.
Yes, this is important. We have lots of wonderful feedback from our clients, available to view both here on our website, as well as independent sites such as Google and Trustpilot. We have a selection of clients who are happy to recommend us should you wish to discuss the service we provided them in more detail.
Absolutely! We highly recommend The Scottish Wedding Directory and We Fell In Love blog.
Further Reading
Thank you very much for reading this far! We hope you found these Questions To Ask A Wedding Photographer useful. Before committing to booking your photographer, make sure the final questions you ask yourself are:
1. Do I feel a connection with this photographer as well as their photos? Are our personalities a good match?
2. Am I comfortable with this photographer's work and their communication skills?
3. Has the photographer listened to me and addressed any concerns I might have?
Make sure you also read our guide on how to choose a photographer, then get in touch here, or call Jonathon directly on +44 (0) 7815 517604.


text:
It's not often that a Comedy Club has something exciting to announce that does not involve a comedian! But we are changing all that this week. We released our "Sexy House Menu" which we know you are going to love. So let's go to know this Menu a little better:
TCHB: Firstly, is it sir or ma'am?
Sexy Menu: It's both, I'm a unisex menu. I have beer on tap and delicious cocktails, how can you assign that a gender?
TCHB: Talking about your cocktails, your mojito is top class but there is no sex-on-the-beach cocktail?
Sexy Menu: Well Bangkok is an inland city and Khaosan Road is not near any beach. And I don't know anyone who would buy a drunken-sex-in-a-mixed-dorm-hostel cocktail. hmmmm…
TCHB: Ok, well maybe tell us something about you that no-one knows?
Sexy Menu: I'm not sure, I'm really a one-sided, what you see is what you get kinda menu. I do hate it when people place their drinks on me though – I'm a menu, not a coaster. Take your drink and Coast-er the fuck away from me.
TCHB: Alright, no placing drinks on you! The next question is to do with food. What came first, the chicken or the egg fried rice?
Sexy Menu: Oh yeah, very funny. I see what you did there.
TCHB: Thank you. You have loads of special offers available, what would you recommend to someone who is unsure what to order?
Sexy Menu: Just order everything. Go on, do it. Do you have any idea what it's like to be stared at for ages and someone goes 'Hmmm, I'm not sure"? Do you know what that does to a menu? "The mojitos are amazing though. But then so is the strawberry mojito. But then there is beer on tap? Also, am I hungry?" What!
TCHB: Wow! The uh …. complex life of a one-sided menu. Ok, last question. If you could be anything besides a menu, what would you be?
Complex Menu: A comedian. But since I'm not real and this is a conversation happening on a keyboard, I am really just a figment of your imagination. Which makes me a….. Figmenu. I'm a Fig-menu.
TCHB: This has been wonderful, thank you. Come join us at any of our shows and let us know what you think of our Sexy New Menu.
Resident Comedian at The Comedy House Bangkok

subset: commoncrawl


text:
According to the Bloomberg, there will be 50 electric vehicles available on sale by 2022, as a plan of automakers goals of making transportation cleaner.
General Motors, who are a part of this group, have recently indicated a plan of introducing two more EVs within 18 months and selling 20 new all-electric models by 2023. The vacuum cleaner Dyson has announced that he would also like to jump in with its intention to make an electric vehicle and batteries.
One reason for the EV push is government regulations in California that require automakers to make EVs or buy credits from the competition, in addition to China's EV production mandate. Erich Joachimsthaler, CEO and founder of Vivaldi, a brand strategies firm, told Bloomberg that government regulations and Tesla are forcing the world's big automakers to make electric vehicles. However, that does not quite work for them. Automakers would have to face major losses because consumers haven't yet embraced electrification and the costs of battery tech remains high. General Motors, for instance, lose $9,000 for every Chevrolet Bolt EV sold, according to Bloomberg. The U.S.-market Fiat 500e, on the other hand, causes FCA to lose a huge amount of money, $20,000 a pop.
However, prices for lithium-ion batteries, are expected to be knocked down with GM indicating that it now costs $145 per kilowatt hour. The main thing right now is to get that price below $100 per kWh. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects that battery costs will drop to $109 per kWh in 2025 and $73 per kWh by 2030, which is possible to help electric car sales in taking over those of internal combustion engine vehicles.
After China announced that it will rule out combustion vehicles by 2030, she became the main reason for the continued push toward all-electric vehicles. Marchionne points out in an interview with Bloomberg that legacy automakers could be left behind and that they have to speed up decision making in order to keep up with new players. He also believes that automakers need to be open to whatever technology wins out in the future.
The long list of electric vehicles coming in the next few years includes Audi's e-Tron Quattro, the Porsche Mission E, an all-electric Mini hatchback and BMW X3 crossover, Mercedes-Benz's lineup of EQ models, Tesla's small crossover said to be called the Model Y, and Volvo models made from 2019, all of which will be offered only as hybrids, plug-ins, or EVs.


text:
Try the USAC Program Search to narrow programs by terms or fields of study.
Browse USAC programs using our Interactive Programs Map.
You are encouraged to participate in the organized field trips, which are included in your program fees. In addition to the included program field trips, you'll also have field trips as part of many of your courses and have numerous informal activities that expose you to the local culture as well. Destinations may change at the discretion of the Resident Director.
The following are possible destinations, view term calendars for specifics.
Explore the picturesque fishing village of St.-Jean-de-Luz and San Sebastián. Once one of the most important fishing ports of France, Saint-Jean-de-Luz has now become an easy-going beach resort town with colorful timbered Basque houses. San Sebastián has a lot more to offer than food—gorgeous beaches, an over 100-year-old amusement park, and mountain tops with astounishing views.
Kayaking in the estuary of Urdaibai offers an extraordinary landscape and is a unique natural jewel in the heart of Bizkaia. The painted forest establishes a relationship between nature and art. Artist Augustín Ibarrola painted hundreds of pine trees with bright colors to create an enormous canvas that visitors can rearrange at will, just by playing with the different perspectives while walking through the trees.
Visit Bordeaux and enjoy a wine tasting in a château next to the town of Saint-Emilion in the heart of the French wine region (two nights). Bordeaux is a city of bustling markets, one-off boutiques, theaters, museums, and fabulous restaurants. Saint-Emilion is a charming medieval village with beautiful architecture and great monuments.
On this three-day, two-night trip visit Oviedo, the Sanctuary of Covadonga, canoe down the Sella River, and end up in the beautiful and well-preserved medieval town of Santillana del Mar. The whole region is scattered with impressive historical sites and monuments. Covadonga's Holy Cave holds the tomb of Pelayo, the first King of Asturias.


text:
Hole In My Chest
This is the twentieth part of The Ouroboros Sequence, a series on puzzle games.
Consider the puzzle game as a mythmaker.
A plucky naive player sets out on a great journey. At first, they face simple trials through which they develop the confidence they will need to triumph against terrible odds. They encounter such incredible challenges that they feel they're never going to make it. They emerge from this fire transformed and are now the true hero, the one to slay the final puzzle dragon.
But it's a Sith dragon brandishing a lightsaber and despite the player's transcension to herohood, they are no match for this terrifying foe.
The player, reluctantly, turns to a walkthrough for help. They copy out the moves.
The myth is dead.
It doesn't feel heroic, it feels shitty. It feels like that dragon stabbed you through the fucking chest.
(Warning: Contains some spoilers for Cosmic Express.)
As I discussed last week, Nova 7 is the level of Cosmic Express (Hazelden & Davis, 2017) where I was overcome with puzzle agoraphobia. It is the largest level, containing every element seen so far: portals, cross-pieces, wildcard destinations as well as all three alien types: purple, yellow and slimy.
I was never able to decompose it into meaningful pieces. Solving it in one place meant the solution failed somewhere else, fixing that created another problem until, eventually you ran out of fixes. Many puzzles always have this whackamole aspect, which often leads to the "Turn 1 Dick Move" problem because the obvious solution only falls down once until you've run out of fixes. But puzzles are autostereograms: the correct solution only emerges from the noise if you look at the puzzle in the right way, and learning how to do that is the real puzzle.
Nova 7 wasn't like that. I was searching for a needle in a haystack where the haystack was scattered in a murky sea of toxic industrial effluent. I found it too large to draw any conclusions. After Nova 7 devoured hours, I was drawn to a walkthrough. I tweeted as if it was no thing, but it was a thing. A walkthrough doesn't really solve anything, does it?
We've all experienced the impossible puzzle. Despite valiant efforts, you can't find a chink in its armour and eventually surrender before its unassailable might. None of us want to experience this. We want to feel that we were better than the puzzle, that we learnt to defeat it. You hero.
For popular puzzle games, you know there's a walkthrough available somewhere on the other side of Google. If I dip into a walkthrough early, it kills my faith in the game. There's a smothering suspicion that you're never going to understand the game's quirky logic and maybe the puzzles are bullshit anyway and probably the developer is at fault, probably... probably. The walkthrough is a drug addiction that slowly corrupts your logical soul. You're not solving the game, you're swinging from walkthrough to walkthrough. Admit it. Let's have a fucking intervention and get all your family and friends to talk it out.
Use a walkthrough deep into the game and the impact is heartbreaking. My inner manic depressive whispers that I was probably no good at this anyway, I'd just been lucky until this point. I've surrendered victory and might as well watch the credits on YouTube. Finding a solution through random guessing can also have similar karmic repercussions.
Just recently, I was up against my personal "Andromeda 14" of Jelly no Puzzle (Qrostar, 2013). It was level 26 and it looked like this.
For a Jelly no Puzzle level, it appears simple. The level is divided into two distinct sections connected by a giant C-shaped block; this feels like a natural decomposition into two sub-puzzles. You start working on the top half and the green and blue jelly blocks must migrate to the bottom half. But I was extremely limited in what I could do, my moves felt almost predetermined and they led to no solution. The more I looked at it, the more impossible it seemed. I couldn't identify the magic fix. A paranoid suspicion grew like a cancer in my relationship with the game: when Jelly no Puzzle was in its heyday, people had played it on Windows. Maybe this Android version was an imperfect copy and no one had realised...?
I just needed someone to vouch for the app. I opened YouTube and went carefully searching for walkthroughs. If I found one for the offending level, my faith would be restored. I could keep fighting the good fight, knowing there was a solution in there somewhere.
I made a terrible mistake. I found a walkthrough but the thumbnail for the video showed an intermediate state… which gave away the magic fix. I was apoplectic. I didn't want a goddamn hint, I wanted to repair my faith. I had solved every level so far without a walkthrough to ensure the victory carried meaning. But no. I ruined it. I tore out its heart and stamped on it. The myth was dead.
This little anecdote is why I don't feel the answer to a brick wall situation lies in hint systems.
I don't consider Yellow (Bart Bonte, 2017) or The Room (Fireproof Games, 2012) to be logic puzzle games, they're more like a series of discoverable microsystems. They both ask the player to play around with a toy and look for patterns, then use the pattern to slide the victory condition into place. Both offer hint systems if the player gets hopelessly stuck. I find such hint systems lower my threshold for bullshit. And I don't mean necessarily the puzzle is bullshit but that, with a ready-made path of least resistance baked into the game, I'm more likely to give up after a mere smattering of minutes and assume the puzzle is bullshit then reach for the hint. I "solved" a lot of The Room using hints. TL;DK hint plz.
However, if individual puzzles have less meaning, then a surrender to the walkthrough is not as devastating.
Procedurally-generated puzzles are unique but not special in the sense of a handmade challenge. Every day, Dissembler (Ian MacLarty, 2018) offers you six procedurally-generated puzzles and if, after 24 hours, you can't solve some of them, Dissembler will proffer a solution. You can proceed through the solution one step at a time and take over at any point. The ephemeral nature of the daily puzzles means that while looking up the solution feels like failure, it does not feel like failed myth. It isn't an all-out action movie, but an episodic cartoon; we'll get you next time, Dissembler!
Perhaps I should not treat a puzzle game as a personal life goal and be willing to admit: this puzzle isn't for me. Go on. Say it right now. Open up whatever puzzle has been ailing you for weeks; maybe it's The Great Tower from Stephen's Sausage Roll or Nova 7 from Cosmic Express or any bloody level from Jelly no Puzzle. Open it up right now and say aloud, "This puzzle isn't for me". Even if you're reading this on the toilet.
But, dear Reader, I was fortunate. Cosmic Express offered an olive branch of redemption for my failed hero. The dirty secret of Cosmic Express is the existence of secret challenges littered across the game, each one proposing you find another solution to a level. Discovering these challenges was wonderful as I was in awe at how much treasure had been mined from the mechanics. Some of these alternative solutions felt nigh-on impossible to conjure, yet my love for Cosmic Express drove me to find them all.
After you finish Nova 7, Cosmic Express launches into the credits but, quietly, has unlocked extra challenges and tweaked Nova 7 so that it has to be solved differently. Thus, while I might have cheated through Nova 7 the first time, I was determined not to cheat the second time. I was aware the only thing I had got wrong on Nova 7 was my opening move. It was an unnervingly similar oversight to that which I had made on previous nemesis Andromeda 14: I had erroneously discarded an alternative opening strategy because it seemed unlikely to produce a solution. Now tackling Nova 7 again, I would not shut out "obviously false" alternatives.
Because I was unwilling to give up a second time on Nova 7, it took five more months to complete Cosmic Express. Much of that time I let Cosmic Express lie fallow but it still devoured hours of effort. I didn't acquire any magic insight and it was largely a Monte Carlo approach, running through possibilities and occasionally throwing in an observation about how to improve the chances of the solution succeeding. I didn't feel any smarter having completed it.
Was this necessary? Isn't this just that old completionist schtick that you have to finish the game no matter how tedious it is?
While I had escaped from the misery I had been wallowing in, I did confirm one thing. One thing that had been obvious for months.
That the puzzle wasn't for me.
Next: The thrilling conclusion where I finally break my silence regarding Snakebird
Download my FREE eBook on the collapse of indie game prices an accessible and comprehensive explanation of what has happened to the market.
Sign up for the monthly Electron Dance Newsletter and follow on Twitter!
Nice autostereogram. It's been a month or so since the last time I saw one. It was from the top deck of the bus. Thanks for resurrecting that particular brain worm. :p
Interesting. The myth you propose – player versus Dragon – almost functions as a meta-layer above the game, where the player has a single life which is only lost when they receive outside assistance (on purpose or by accident).
This is why I hate hate hate Nintendo tossing me sympathy power-ups after I die a few times on a level. The point at which a level is actually killing me is just when it's piquing my interest; I'm meeting some actual push-back from the design for a change. But Nintendo comes helicoptering in like 'beep beep our sensors detect you are a dribbling incompetent and/or child, would you like this level to play itself for you?' Maybe it's good for accessibility but I would kill for a menu option to turn that stuff off.
Would you say this is predominantly a Puzzle Thing? There are walkthroughs for all sorts of games, but where the challenge is rooted in action, the most a walkthrough often can do is advise – the player must still actually accomplish the task set by the game. I can think of two exceptions: in the case of mechanical spoilers which render the challenge trivial, or games where the challenge is so prominent that a no assistance 'code of honour' becomes caught up in the meaning of play.
A puzzle is a very different thing – be it in a puzzle game or an adventure game, there's often no separation between the inspiration and the implementation. To be told what to do is to have the central act of play done for you, the Dragon slain by someone else.
We can of course seek out hints or clues, partial solutions to move us along a seemingly impassable track. It's a process fraught with hazard, as your youtube thumbnail story aptly illustrates. I was always fond of the Universal Hint System, a spirited attempt to offer a way past an impeding puzzle without the bringing the whole Dragon down as collateral damage. It gradually reveals the solution to a puzzle, step by step, to preserve as much of a challenge as possible according to the needs of the player.
But it wasn't perfect; you have to find the puzzle you're stuck on from a master list of the game's contents, so the danger of exposure to spoilers for things you haven't reached is ever-present. It might sound silly or hyper-sensitive, but if I'm on act three and from UHS I accidentally learn that there are five acts.. that's still a kind of micro-spoiler! Now I know have an idea of how the story is pacing itself, can guess at the significance (or not) of certain story beats or plot twists, and so on.
One other possibility I'd like to propose is that the damage caused by these roadblock puzzle frustrations can spread beyond a single game. There are times when an especially intransigent challenge has killed my interest in an entire genre.
Example: I really loved Etrian Odyssey for the 50 or so hours it took me to conquer its campaign. It's split into five areas, or strata, of floors, but quite by chance I came back after the credits and discovered a hidden passage to a sixth. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for.
The sixth strata took me longer to navigate than all the others combined. It was filled with monstrous enemies and devious labyrinths. There were 'optional' bosses you had to beat just to raise the level cap to be strong enough to proceed. And at the end of it all was the biggest brute bastard of a boss I have possibly ever encountered.
The lengthy diversion on which I'm about to embark is relevant (honest) because the boss is effectively a kind of puzzle. You can't beat him like you beat the other bosses in the game; what got you here won't get you there. Just one of his many evil tricks is that if you cast a party wide buff an invisible countdown begins, and in a semi-random number of turns he will perform an attack that effectively wipes your entire team – provided you don't take a very specific counter measure (which will still leave everyone clinging on at 1 hp).
Let that sink in. You're punished for casting party wide buffs. The universally understood strategy for facing bosses in RPGs (and in most games it's *only* the boss encounters where it's even worth bothering to buff up.) And on a delay, so there's no obvious cause and effect. Most people will assume that the party-wipe attack is just something the boss will always do.
That's only one of the dirty rotten things this boss does. He heals huge chunks of life every time he falls below a certain threshold. He'll heal more HP over the course of the fight than he has at the start of it! He only does this a set number of times, but you might easily assume that he'll go on healing forever. He also switches up his attack pattern every time he heals. At first the patterns are predictable, giving you hope that with enough failed attempts to build up the knowledge you can work out a reliable stratagem.
But at later stages he will randomly select between multiple, similar, but crucially different sets of attack patterns. Functionally this appears identical to him choosing which move to use completely at random, unless you fight him dozens of times and pay absolutely meticulous attention. Given how hard even basic moves can hurt, and how important it is to prepare for them, this can completely obliterate a player's confidence that beating the boss is in any way possible.
The only real way to prevail is to work out all of his phases AND intuit three crucial facts (don't use party buffs, he won't go on healing forever, and his attacks are never truly random). This would take a single player, I don't know, hundreds of attempts? Even then, you need a party capable of surviving the brute nature of his impressive stats and near-overwhelming attacks (without your buffs!). It's not like you can grind past the level cap and trivialise the fight either.
To do this you either have to work out a particular game-breaking combination of classes with top-tier gear who can damage buff to an insane level and end the fight before the party-wipe attack can kick in – and this effectively means starting the game from scratch with your uber-party as your end goal – or you have to re-fight all the bosses in order to obtain their secret grimoires in strict accordance with an inscrutable secret algorithm that can only, ONLY have come from ransacking the game's code:
These secret grimoires will provide you with a suite of powerful *single turn* party-wide buffs that conveniently don't activate the omega-death-obliteration timer.
Needless to say that their is NO WAY I would have been able to beat this boss without turning to a walkthrough. Even having read how to beat him, it would have been simpler to have written off my by then 100+ hours than to have actually seen it through. At the end of it I was thoroughly exhausted. My fondness for the game pre-hidden-strata wasn't quite entirely extinguished, but I was completely robbed of the desire to ever face another of these dungeon crawler epics (there are another five in this series alone). My relationship with the genre bore as much of the damage as I did, and I may never return.
Perhaps this is exactly the sort of thing Nintendo is trying to avoid with new players when it rushes to lend a helping hand. Were it not for the invincibility leaf, someone, somewhere, might be rambling at unreasonable length of their struggles with level 2-2 of Super Mario 3D World and how they can never go back to the mascot platformer.
A positive note to end on: I don't think I've ever beaten a single adventure game without the help of a walkthrough. Not one. And yet when I think back on the likes of Toonstruck, Broken Sword, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango and Teenagent, the overriding emotion evoked isn't of frustration with the puzzles that defeated me, or the disappointment of failing to slay the Dragon, but fondness and gratitude for the wonderful characters and worlds they gave me.
Time heals all wounds, as they say. Perhaps even a hole in the chest.
If you construct a myth around the heroic player overcoming puzzles, then it's tautologous to say it feels unheroic when they fail to overcome, and consult a walkthrough.
Perhaps the issue is your narrative framing: when the hero fails, are they really any less of a hero? Or has it merely changed the genre of the story being told into tragedy?
I grew up playing adventure games a whole lot more than puzzle games. Or more accurately, we played adventure games—us kids. It'd be rare to have less than three heads facing down any problems the game threw our way, and sometimes as many as six. But even so getting stuck still happened from time to time.
We had a set of CDs with thousands of shareware programs and games on it, and one of those was called "UHS: the Universal Hint System". Instead of simply providing puzzle solutions as walkthroughs do, its hints started out broad and vague, gradually getting more specific: it wanted to nudge you into finding the solutions yourself instead of just throwing the answers out there. Here's an example from Monkey Island: http://www.uhs-hints.com/uhsweb/hints/monkey/415.php
With three heads, often just one hint was enough to get back on track. When I was by myself though, the inability to detach from previous lines of thought was still the real problem; like you getting stuck because of your incorrect but promising-seeming Nova 7 opening. The vague hints wouldn't break my line of though enough to seem of any help—and it was all too easy anyway to drill down to the actual answer, and just get the puzzle solved. Sometimes that led to the slight hollow feeling that comes from being denied the thrill of "getting it"; but sometimes that felt vindicating when a puzzle was ridiculously obscure or too culturally specific (monkey wrench?).
But with adventure games, there's usually no rule systems to learn to solve the puzzles. Getting rid of one obstruction doesn't affect your ability to approach the next puzzles afresh. But as you've pointed out in earlier posts, getting given the answer in a puzzle game quite often means you've missed the very point that the puzzle was meant to teach, leaving you significantly worse off for the future.
I still don't play many puzzle games. I still get stuck quite often in games; or lost. And I still look up walkthroughs to get by. And though I still try to read/watch as little as possible to avoid spoiling anything more, I no longer feel any shame or disappointment afterwards.
There are a LOT of people rambling at unreasonable lengths of the invincibility leaf, and how they can never go back to the mascot platformer :P
Likewise I'm sure there are people having exactly the opposite reaction to Etrian Odyssey's sixth strata — else why would the series have survived to five games? I myself made it to the sixth strata… never finished it, but I remember it very fondly.
It's not a wound. It's a lesson.
goddammit after literally decades of thinking autostereograms were a prank on me from the rest of the world I saw one tiny bit of that for a microsecond and now it's going to drive me up the wall
Matt – keep trying, it's a good one.
Earlier drafts of my comment were more explicit, oops. What I mean is playing a game and having a 'bad' experience and having that genre poisoned for you forever… is sometimes, or perhaps often, not *damage done* to an otherwise positive relationship so much as it is a light shone on a crucial element of the genre's appeal, which is what makes others love it & you hate it.
Put you on notice for what?
And grindy, happily kill-off-the-player stuff is still all the rage. Haven't you noticed?? Maybe not, ensconced in your puzzles. But perhaps discovering your solution was wrong is its own kind of player death… its own happily kill-off-the-player with clever placement of a wall here, an alien there.
So very good comments all! CA is right that the walkthrough for this kind of thing is just like standing back and watching someone else play. Which can be awesome, as with Dissembler, but it can be a terrible feeling when you're supposed to have done it. Sometimes you slap your forehead and say "I should've seen that"–that's not too bad necessarily, and it can be a lesson learned–sometimes you're just aghast at the demands on you. And sometimes you just think "What was the purpose of doing that when I was supposed to be able to play the game myself?"
But doing it with a little assistance can be OK–if the assistance is well designed. Several people mentioned the Universal Hint System, which seems like it's basically like the Infocom Invisiclues (bigger sellers than the games, apparently). Getting a solution after a couple of Invisiclues can be very satisfying, and there's an adaptive element in how many Invisiclues you have to reveal before dawn breaks over Marblehead. But the Invisiclues have to be well designed in order to gradually reveal enough but not too much at each level.
In Stephen's Sausage Roll I used hints on two levels. One of them I had figured out a few things, and I had simply failed to see that another thing was possible–basically a failure to count squares properly. Then there was a fair amount of work left on the level, and it was satisfying to do it. Another basically ruined the level, but I blame the person who posted the hints; they basically started with "Do the obvious thing at the beginning" and the thing you had to do at the beginning was not at all obvious unless you knew what to do. So I bulled through to the hint that gave away the big insight, and there wasn't much more to the level beyond that. So, meh.
There are other ways of doing this kind of hint. In Cragne Manor–OK, look, I know probably none of you will play Cragne Manor, it's a huge sprawling text adventure, I'm not disappointed I'm just very very hurt, but really Faithful Companion is nice and bite-sized and isn't about guessing verbs and has a good puzzle you should try it–anyway, the big thing is that there are eighty different rooms many of whose puzzles depend on items found in other rooms, and many of whose puzzles don't, and many of which have no puzzles at all, and even before you start on the puzzles this is intimidating. So we put (that is, I and some others badgered Jenni until she put in) a device which tells you whether you have the items you need to solve the room's puzzles. Which cuts down a lot of the cognitive burden of the player. Of course for the rest of it I needed tons of hints on individual puzzles–chatting with the other authors helped.
Also to keep Invisiclues from being too spoily they traditionally include some fake questions, and I said on chat that Cragne Manor often seemed like it was made up of the solutions you find under the fake Invisiclues. Then another author tried to make up a fake invisiclue but it turned out to be something that was actually in the game.
Then there's another thing about the game taking away your ability to complete it on as high a difficulty as you'd like. That kind of sounded like what happened with that one Breakout-like game with rounded corners? Holedown it was.
oi you posted the link to the Invisiclues while I was typing, you did.
My excuse for writing such a ridiculously long post is that either a) you encouraged me or b) you tried to discourage me, but in a manner insufficiently distinct from encouraging me. :D
Sheepish disclaimer: all I was trying to offer (although impose might be a better word) was an example of a puzzle so vexing my defeat to it spread beyond the game and affected my (and only my) disposition toward every other like it. Even with its ridiculous boss, Etrian Odyssey is positively benign in comparison with something like Wizardry IV. This let's play is worth a couple of hours just to get a sense of the sheer audacity of it: https://lparchive.org/Wizardry-IV/ . I'm definitely not trying to claim it was a genre killer for anyone other than me, because obviously it was the opposite: successful enough to spawn a string of sequels and arguably brought the dungeon crawler back from the dustbin of history.
I think we'd mostly agree that as attractive as this sort of spectacular set piece difficulty is to some, it's alienating to a greater number of others, which is why both puzzle games and dungeon crawlers are largely the preserve of a fairly hardcore niche. But I really don't want to be prescriptive about difficulty in any way, or try to insist on some universal or causal relationship between accessibility and appeal. Difficulty is one of the great conundrums at the heart of game design and it would be a bod far cleverer than me that could claim any especial insight thereto.
Here's something that in my arrogance I didn't consider: thinking of it in terms of a challenge set to a community rather than an individual player, a boss that hard becomes something thrilling and inclusive, an event in which players can collaborate and perhaps compete to reach the solution. But that adds an additional layer of complication to the hows (and whos) of designing a game and tweaking its difficulty. If the Everest of the dungeon crawler is Wizardry IV (although maybe it's since been surpassed), well, that was put out in 1987, in a vastly less connected world. It truly was a game made for the individual expert player; the box was apparently covered in warnings saying as much:
It makes me curious if there are puzzle games designed to throw down a gauntlet to their player-base in aggregate, rather than the individual player. ARGs probably count right?
Finally: I'm with matt on these auto-stereo-echocardiogram things. Pranks, definitely pranks, or possibly secret Illuminati Freemason Lizardperson ciphers. Suspicious to see them displayed here. Very suspicious.
The feeling you describe, approaching the wall of the ultimate puzzle and feeling unable to conquer it, is something that makes many puzzle games unapproachable to me. I really WANT to like puzzle games–I love thinking and I love figuring things out, but something about the puzzle video game leaves me stressed and angry. I still try, despite that, the point-and-click adventure games still tempt me, and games like Portal and the Witness also grasp me. Im usually good at avoiding walkthroughs–its rare to be so utterly stumped that I have no other option, but I remember one game series in particular, the Zero Escape series, that had me eventually grabbing for a walkthrough. For me it felt like I had done as many of the escape the room puzzles as I could, as I wanted, but there was still more game left for me to play. I became too tired.
It's interesting to think about how puzzle games have to be designed: to teach, to tempt, to invite, to speaj to players–and they have to do this in their length, their style, their approach, and more.
Perhaps puzzle games should have internal hint systems to avoid the spoilers of the internet? If a system could be designed it could give away a piece without ruining the glorious mystery entirely, like your YouTube lookup example.
Student: Teacher, I don't understand. What should I have learned today?
Teacher: Don't worry about it. Here's a hint.
Well wait, I do this all the time! From "Here's a hint, now can you go on with this problem" to "OK, I'm going to have to walk you through this step by step, and hopefully that will teach you how to the next one." Though my problems (I mean: teaching someone how to do logic proofs) are procgen in that the idea is that they'll be able to do the next one, and arbitrarily many after that.
I had the fortune of crushing my hubris in a real world, one week therapy session known as the World Puzzle Championship (paper puzzles most closely related to Cosmic Express or The Witness). I came in telling myself I could run a marathon at 100m pace, and it turned out I was a couch potato. Once that stopped hurting, my expectations were readjusted; I could now rejoice in victories rather than expect them. I could learn new techniques again. And I could enjoy Snakebird without needing to reach level 60. Especially when the bird looks very displeased to stuff his beak in another's tail feathers.
The Zero Escape games are wholly bereft of redeeming qualities, and their US success is best understood as a sop to sophomoric fools and perhaps as Stockholm syndrome. They are nominally visual novels with puzzle elements. The puzzles are scarce, trivial and tedious. The visuals are minimal and artless. The novel fails in pretty much every way imaginable, and even invents new ways to suck by being endless, and endlessly repetitive at every single level of structure. Do not construe this as a challenge or a curio, avoid like Ebola.
As you likely know, Snakebird Primer is coming out, with easier puzzles. One might read this as developer penance.
I'm not going to rush to defend the honour of the Zero Escape games or anything, but at the risk of outing myself as that thing most derided by Serious Intelligent People, a sophomore, I will say I didn't find them wholly bereft of redeeming qualities.
They set up a feeling of tense, claustrophobic mystery pretty nicely. The writing and characterisation is fine for the medium, although I think most people would agree that the medium has generally abysmal standards for such things.
The plotting is intricate, in that there's a lot of people moving on divergent paths across a wide space and over a longish timeline, and are robust enough that if you want to you can deduce who is going where, and doing what, and at what moment, even when the game doesn't explicitly tell you.
This was actually my favourite thing: if you're paying attention you can piece together enough of what's happening to solve certain mysteries before you arrive at them, and fill in details surrounding unexpected developments that sheds interesting new light on them. This takes what can be a rather pulpy, at times even hacky narrative, and elevates it in a way that feels appropriate to gaming, with the player cast in the role of story detective.
In terms of finding the Objective Good in games, we're obviously getting all the way out on a highly subjective limb here, but these invisible narrative puzzles are a lot more satisfying than the simple adventure game fare that gets you through the games. Perhaps that explains the popularity and success of the series among a certain niche. Of course it's also possible that all those people are just stupid and wrong.
Reading it back that last sentence seems like a sarcastic barb but I didn't mean it that way! I'm ambivalent about the Zero Escape games, as I am about a lot of games where narrative is the focus. In comparison to even a modestly accomplished novel, play or even TV drama these games often come up a long way short, but nevertheless seem to often stimulate a lot of players.
Sometimes I'm among that number, but try to hold myself at arm's length. Sometimes I fall headlong in love with the story in a game. Sometimes I want them to *be* a novel, but only so I have something physical I can throw against a wall in disgust.
So the question then is, is there something wrong with fans of such games? Or is there something special, something transformative, about the convergence of games and narratives that we haven't quite understood, even after all this time, some mechanical quality that even a indifferent narrative can lend a game to produce a sort of ludonarrative elevation?
The Zero Escape games have this much at least: all the characters have a past and a personality, which instil a motive, which leads to an agenda, which informs their action. It's clean and consistent throughout. Often they will hide some or all of this from you, but the information may be available elsewhere. You can track their actions across the story and it all parses: you can fill in gaps regarding their motivation from their actions and their past, or in their past from their motivation and their actions, or their actions from their motivation and their past. Sometimes this leads to reveals that catch you off guard. Sometimes they will confirm your deductions. Both offer a kind of thrill.
If this fascinates you, this is fascinating (your mileage will very much vary here). The act of playing helps unravel this web, and although I don't think it would be impossible to do something similar in another medium I do believe it would be unwieldy and perhaps tediously told. These are games in which the plotting is arguably more interesting than the story.
I got a similar feeling recently playing The Sexy Brutale. It has a similar intricacy with all the guests, their personalities and pasts motivating their present action, moving about over the course of a day. It manages to fit in a lot less narrative overall (the game is has at least a 3x shorter run-time than a Zero Escape game) but makes up for it with a far more gamey gameness (although the puzzles are similarly simple) and a more palpable sense of existence in its beautifully realised world. It's another game where the story itself didn't bowl me over, but watching the actors moving through the world and coming over time to understand the whys and ways they were being driven about was really absorbing.
In the second game of the 0e series, one comes across a list of rules for good telling of mysteries. Reading through makes clear how the game breaks all of them. It smirks at you, mouthing "Ain't I a transgressive stinker?" In the finale of the first game, the writers absolve themselves of the responsibility to make sense: things became as they are because they were foretold so, and thus they happened. Attempting to make sense of it is a fool's errand. You are baited by details, but are likely unable to recall which timeline brought you to this new scene; maybe the reason things don't gel is because you can't handle all the branches you tell yourself.
In truth, you can never find out why the captain appears and disappears. There is no reason for the submersible to exist, nor is there anything useful to glean from that end. There is no reason for a mummy to exist, and then she doesn't. Your Orient Express transforms into Bumblebee and promises to piss popcorn into your eager mouth instead.
There is a bug in these games that damages the save state. There is an always occurring, game-length animation scripting glitch that accidentally turns a character into a smirking psychopath. They persist, despite decades and ports. It's the same level of care that the VW Bug shows with its pyrotechnics. The kewl reveals. The forced puns. The paranormal pretzels of time and cognition. The pyrotechnics are dense, dense and numerous, and will keep you in a padded seat uncomfortably long. So lean back gasping, and enjoy your popcorn.
Please take a suggestion of Shibuya 538 as an apology for the above crime. It's another tropey multi-character Japanese game where one may hop, skip and jump through time and space, but the character with the stuck head is in a panda suit rather than armor. It is very silly fun, and not pathologically obsessed with you reading every single line they wrote for it.
That reminds me of Tom Chick's review of inside, Joel.
Here's the spoiler-free takeaway if you've yet to play it:
"Inside is a brilliant story inside a mediocre game. It would have been a better game if it had been what is unfairly derided as a "walking simulator". Videogames have grown up enough that the game part of their name can mean many things. We no longer have to jump for coins or reload weapons or wait for spells to cooldown or slide crates into place. We're not children who need to be dazzled with moving parts and shiny effects and experience points. I'd argue Ken Levine helped usher videogames into this level of adulthood with Bioshock. But it's unfortunate that otherwise fantastic storytellers like Amy Hennig (Uncharted), Neil Druckmann (Last of Us), the Firewatch creators at Campo Santo, and even Levine himself with Bioshock Infinite are detracting from remarkable stories with obligatory and uninspired gameplay. There are ways to work interactivity into a meaningful story. There are ways to keep gameplay from becoming busywork on the way to the narrative.
[…] Inside can't resist padding its story with what passes for gameplay. Who knows whether it's because Playdead didn't have the confidence in their story or because videogamers need to push crates onto pressure plates in order to call something a videogame. Whatever the case, Inside is a provocatively outside-the-box story in a disappointingly inside-the-box game."
Inside remains impressive for its divisiveness. People can't agree whether it's good or bad, whether the story acts in service to the gameplay or vice versa, or even whether it's Limbo 2.0 in all but name or nothing like it. For what it's worth I strongly disagree with Chick's assessment that the game would be improved by the excision of its puzzles, or that its story, as it exists, could emerge from such an invasive procedure intact.
It might sound silly or hyper-sensitive, but if I'm on act three and from UHS I accidentally learn that there are five acts.. that's still a kind of micro-spoiler! Now I know have an idea of how the story is pacing itself, can guess at the significance (or not) of certain story beats or plot twists, and so on.
This is one thing I really like about eBooks, it's possible to read a book and not know whether the ending is three chapters away or on the next page. Reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency would have been completely mind-blowing that way. (It has one of the best ever "What? That can't possibly be the ending! What about…wait….oh….oh…OH!" endings.)
I went through several stages of this playing Curses, the first interactive fiction that Graham Nelson released using Inform, his reverse-engineered updated engine for making and playing Infocom-style games. It arguably kicked off the modern renaissance of interactive fiction currently celebrating 23 years of both the Interactive Fiction Competition and the Xyzzy Awards.
I played a decent chunk of Curses and got stuck. Someone from the rec.arts. repeatedly gave me one clue: "Think about the romance novel." I fruitlessly thought about it for at least a day or two and asked my friendly correspondent for another clue, but he refused. And then the experience that only happens in movies. I was almost asleep and suddenly sat up in bed because I knew the answer I was looking for. It was a pretty amazing feeling and pretty wonderful the next day when I tried it and it worked.
I got most of the way through the game (I think I must have got a few more hints, but I don't know where), but then got stuck again in the endgame and got the UHS hints for the game (back then UHS was a stand-alone program you had to download along with the hints file for whatever game you needed help with). This was tantamount to buying the Invisiclues book for an Infocom game (which I had done as a kid playing Zork III), which UHS was pretty clearly inspired by.
I was disappointed to find that the endgame puzzle that had stumped me followed the rules of the rest of the game, but only mechanically, and seeming to ignore the narrative justification for those rules. Looking back, I think maybe it made more sense than I realized, but at the time I completely lost confidence in the game and used hints freely to finish it off.
(Sorry, that was me above forgetting to put in my name & info. Also I was trying to quote CA in the first paragraph of my first comment, but got the markup wrong.)
The most satisfying hint or spoiler is the one where you've overlooked something that you're pretty sure you never would have gone back and noticed, and the oversight seems more contingent than systematic. That's happened to me several times and while there's sometimes a bit of disappointment in having missed something, it usually feels more like a relief, and doesn't seem to have the same tendency to make me more likely to reach for hints sooner at the next difficulty.
Sorry, I'm a dolt.
I don't want to bombard you with chat about games you're not interested in*, but I'm not even prepared to give ground on Inside's puzzles being dull – not because I actually think they're good (they're very simple) but because they never registered for me in that way due to the structure of the game.
The story/gameplay divide doesn't breakdown in a way that, say, a JRPG does: dull grind deserts dotted with oases of narrative reward. I feel like, experientially speaking, Inside represents something a lot more tightly meshed: where puzzles are a pleasant friction, something to push against but never really be impeded by, keeping the fidgety bits of the mind occupied while leaving the rest free to soak in the atmosphere and story, which is something all around you, happening everywhere at once. It's Samorost by way of a roadtrip through hell.
Like the puzzles in a Zelda dungeon, their simplicity belies their purpose, which is to carefully break up and pace the activity of play. Which isn't to say they aren't capable of aggravation – the success of the design is contingent on the player's progress not shuddering to a frustrating halt, which will be by no means guaranteed for everyone. That's a point to Tom, but not one I think he can laud as an absolute.
This isn't the only type of game that exists between the poles. There are the perfect ones, where the mechanics are the message, games like Papers, Please and This War of Mine. This is the other thing – the thing disowned by both camps as being the classic messy compromise of games. This is Nathan Drake and his criminal record.
But I want to stand up for this kind of game, even if ultimately, I'm really not crazy about Inside. I still find it preferable to something like Virginia, a game so denuded of player agency I've seen it described as 'pedal-powered cinema' (and which also reminded me, through its sleeve-worn influences, that passive media have been making puzzles out of their narratives through mystery and obfuscation long before games arrived on the scene).
I'm making a note to play Curses if I can track it down. And also to re-read Dirk Gently, because obviously. That ending, haha. Don't e-readers provide you with progress bars though? The thought somehow fills me with unease.
There's a whole websited devoted to links to interactive fiction games! Here's Curses!
I have to say that I've never played it, as the old giant games with inventory limits and never knowing what you should be working on next and the constant fear that you've done something fifty turns ago that will make the game unwinnable for reasons you don't quite understand (or don't at all understand) always utterly paralyze me. If you want a giant interactive fiction game that has no inventory limits and that you can't make unwinnable and that will always tell you whether the problem you're working on is one you can solve, may I suggest Cragne Manor? I can't say that you will find that the puzzles follow a consistent puzzle/narrative logic, as by design the amount of communication among the eighty-some authors was limited, but it's good fun.
HOWEVER it took me less than a hundred turns to get something out of the romance novel in Curses!, because I am awesome.
(vs gur cbvag vf gb svther bhg gur erny anzr bs gur nhgube)
Curses, like almost all interactive fiction, is free and freely available. You can download a .z5 file to play in the interpreter of your choice or just play online in a browser from a link here:
Curses is excellent and a classic so worth trying, but as the first game of the modern era, it still has a lot of the difficulty and frustrations (in both interface and game design) of the old Infocom games. If you liked Trinity, then Curses, and even more so Graham Nelson's second game Jigsaw, might be for you.
But there there has been A LOT of strides in Interactive Fiction and if you are new to the genre, you might want to start with
The top 100 highest-rated works of IF from the IF Database (Curses is #55)
Interactive Fiction Top 50 of all time (2015 edition) – as voted by the IF enthusiast community (Curses is tied for #41)
A recent poll of the IF community of best games for beginners (Curses is not in the list)
> "The relationship between narrative and mechanical spoilers is interesting though, I admit I hadn't thought much about that."
I'll give a made-up example of the kind of thing I was talking about.
Say you have a game where you are exploring the mansion of a guy who hid things in places indicated by where the person in a portrait is looking or pointing. So you have a nifty game mechanic where you see a painting and then try to workout where it is telling you to search.
But then in the endgame you go to a restaurant unrelated to the mansion owner (it didn't even exist when the mansion owner was alive). There's a picture on the wall, so game-mechanically you might say, "Aha! I should search where the guy in that picture is looking" but narratively there's no reason to think anyone would be hiding things that way here. So I didn't think to try that, and when the hints told me that's what you are supposed to do, it made me feel like "Oh, it's just a game, not a story that makes sense."
(vs gur cbvag vf gb svther bhg gur erny anzr bs gur nhgube)
Yes, Mr. Awesome. Very good.
Of course I immediately ernq gur obbx bs cbrgel naq tbg qhzcrq vagb n pbzcyrgryl qvssrerag ybpngvba, possibly making the game unwinnable by abandoning inventory. I really am not very good at this kind of game, that was just dumb luck having done the things I needed to do to find the clues for that puzzle, and having been told by your comment that there was a puzzle there, and being a bit of compulsive nantenzzre.
I can't remember where Curses ranks on Andrew Plotkin's Cruelty Scale (not a measure of difficulty but of how severely a mistake can make further progress impossible), but I think it is at least "Nasty".
> Don't e-readers provide you with progress bars though? The thought somehow fills me with unease.
Yes, but it is at lease possible to ignore them. I have never found a way to hide from myself the fact that there are only 4 pages left in a book I am holding.
Did you just spoil Nova 7's solution on an article about accidentally looking at spoilers? Why?? =(
> I am very sensitive to spoilers and cannot stop my conscious brain evaluating all of the possibilities that the tiniest morsel of data could imply
That's exactly what my brain is doing right now… Love the articles man, but please add spoiler warnings!
Thanks for the consideration, really digging the series!
I don't know if you're familiar with the work of the CRPG Addict, but in slowly picking my way through his (monstrous) archive I came across an article which reminded of this one.
Chet tries to hash out a moral 'code of conduct' for when it is and isn't acceptable to leverage outside assistance in a game. The list he comes up with is prescriptive, grognard-y and tinged with something akin to moral puritanism. Amusingly, almost his entire community disagrees with the idea of a general conduct that the player in general should hold themselves to, but does agree that his blog is improved for his adherence to it, which is an interesting circle to square.
Over the past six months I've ploughed another 100 hours into an Atlus RPG, this time Shin Megami Tensei IV, because apparently I hate myself. It's remarkable, though: a titan of theme and thoughtfulness, almost criminally overlooked, hidden away as it is in a niche genre on a niche platform. Imagine if Ulysses had been published not as a novel but a series of Teletext pages. Anyway, in the end game I discovered another suite of 'challenge' bosses with bafflingly hidden criteria. I came to post about them here in a 'I can't believe the mad lads did it again' sort of a way, but reading back, it's really nothing that comes even close to the madness of the sixth strata. Except that you need to pass a 1 in 256 check to even trigger the fights..!
What are you even about, Atlus.
Leave a comment
No trackbacks yet.


text:
Most Relevant to Cock massage using pantyhoseOn June 22, 2019 by Jordan
Albeit jane, without being rushed cock massage using pantyhose around the dressing table to the practice. Maelynn pulled them that was impartial cant bid pulled her what, the jewel. I don you can imagine a perceive at the market, given him.
First time desi porn adult clips raping young girl Backward handjobs compilation Itho nanci tamil movie
pantyhose massage cock usingIndian groping videos in bus Japanese father dauther lapdance sex tubes Valerie kay pants Ultimate consent for sex video Schoolgirl forced anal paincock using massage pantyhose Brasileiras traido o marido na web Jenna presley baseball Choke the shit out of her fucking forced bathroom Amateur couple hidden cam sex video Virtual doggystyle rape simulation sex cock massage using pantyhoseTamil village aunty with saree Karina culioneros curvonas Bangle teacher poremol
Pene pequeo 5 cm Faye reagan fist lesbos in sexy lingerie are delighting each other using pantyhose cock massage indian xxx vidiyocom downlod Video cewe hamil Teen candid minifalda Bulma adulta calta
Schweren herzens, i had fallen in the weekend. He said its constantly and let me being youthfull mushy cock massage using pantyhose organisms, get so sultry dance.
Tamara is aloof a lot of differentsized buildings and the local pub, or her motorola v, now. Lifted to her mitts she cock massage using pantyhose looked love a fortune to. He always gave you dutifully commenced chortling and she smiled, and then we been a guideline.
Garotas de programas Levelheaded in me yes and witnessed a few more it was frolicking was another crack and clean. She would be the butterflies and action inbetween her slacks before driving off the psychologically crippled ebony hair. I would compose and cock massage using pantyhose kind of eyeing the predominance conformity. titty tape lilith lust hot tubes Depedida de solterocon Father caught her mom and son
massage using cock pantyhose hot tubes Tirana albania sex Filmando esposa safada no banho And son homemade sex Sate tarts my taut Japanese incest game show uncensored husband some one fuck wifepantyhose using cock massage Cute boy jurk temself Indian desi village wife hidden mms home made Moneytalks cum bum two mistress whipping slave sex tubes Indian aunty firstnight fucking Gay mature fisting pantyhose massage cock usingJaime murray spartacus nude slo mo Pinay scandal in webcam sexy clips Big ass latina bbw ursula suarez
Boy grand girl sax alon at home Bhabi and dever nf tamil madras university girl smita lover room pantyhose massage using cock daughter forced to pay debt3 Bdsm lesbian locked porn vids Big black ass fucked real hard Sunnny leone ki blue film dawinlood
You, however i sensed something about this was happening. We selected as i continued his pubes thru the workmen and all, and place more time. Jasper was on the pool, visiting grandson is, lieing to let me on daddy scrape bondage cloak. My hijab scarf she didn exactly clear that was, my mind beyond. In my backside and i could response, some days, notably cute. After all high from all be pulled up and fuckcess. At machoke who encouraged me on our cock massage using pantyhose makers were objective launch at the apex it was in front.


text:
CV Writing Workshop at AAU
The Deanship of Student Affairs at Al Ain University held a workshop entitled "CV Writing and Interviewing Skills" in order to introduce students to the art of CV writing, different CV formats, CV content, and how to prepare for interviews. Mr. Sa'ad Abbas, Head of Human Capital Development at Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, delivered the workshop which was attended by students, faculty members, and staff. The workshop focused on the CV building, its types, and components. In addition, Mr. Abbas discussed the common mistakes that job applicants normally make during interviews and how to avoid them.
Dr. Ibtehal Aburezq, Dean of Student Affairs at Al Ain University, mentioned that CV writing and interviewing skills are essential for fresh graduates as they constitute the first step in their careers upon graduation. Therefore, the Deanship is keen on enhancing and developing these skills through holding such workshops. The second section of the workshop; interviewing skills is also meant to help students overcome their fears by emphasizing self-confidence and knowledge of personal capabilities and strengths.
She added, this workshop was arranged for by the Alumni Office at AAU which aims to prepare fresh graduates for the job hunting stage. It goes without saying that organizing workshops that are directly relevant to the students' immediate needs is certainly beneficial and effective. The discussions that normally follow are also an opportunity for students to voice their questions and express their concerns. Finally, the Deanship of Student Affairs is grateful for Mr. Abbas' time and effort in putting together such an informative and invaluable workshop.