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Eric Varnes

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Everything posted by Eric Varnes

  13. Simplest solution, the 'father'. I guessed at the story once I saw the cereal "Soylent Dreams", after playing all the way through Vella's half.
  14. I think you might be able to know Car'l's name without ever being told as well. I forgot to bracket [spoilerS] before. Hope it isn't a problem. Anyway, startle Car'l, but exit the conversation immediately after. Get the ladder, knife, and give the knife to Car'l. Then use the shoes on the ladder. Vella says, "Car'l was right!"
  15. ...because I'm a weirdo. Hahaha! Okay, so you can't give the peach to the blind guards before you ask to enter the pyramid. Asking to enter prompts them to mention the existence of the Riddle of Yorn. BUT! IF you choose other topics of conversation and choose to end the conversation without hearing the riddle, you can then hand them the peach and say 'It's the answer to your riddle'. This is highly unlikely for a normal player to do. But I am not a normal player. Heh. Most people will obviously ask what the riddle is before trying to exit the dialogue. I specifically did what I could do to avoid hearing the riddle because I like breaking game logic.
  16. I saw the neck-drawn-over-the-head thing as well, as Vella entered the house.
  17. Isn't that part of the charm and nostalgia of adventure games? If convoluted tasks are accompanied by story, humor, and world-building, the tasks become part of the zany logic that makes adventure games charming. In Meriloft, after getting the first set of cloud shoes that were too big, I half expected to get these and they be too small, and cause me to have to use some clever way to gets ones that are 'just right'.
  18. I had the peach reappear for me as well.
  19. This happens because they are simply flipping the image of Brommel's head to have him looking the other way. You will notice that any asymmetrical bit on someones face changes sides between facing left and right. It's not really a bug. It functions as designed.
  20. Of course you'll get then a lot of complaints how difficult it is. You have diverse crowd, and unfortunately need to deal with that. If you'll add a selectable difficulty level of some sort to Act 1 even later, I for one will certainly replay that part. The biggest issue is that experienced adventure gamers, ESPECIALLY those who played the Monkey Island games, actually think differently. Once you play a couple of those games, you understand that the puzzles might be ridiculously convoluted. The puzzles themselves might reflect a play on words rather than the logical use of items. (Using one's head to drive a nail into a board instead of a blunt object, like a hammer. I think this example hits the nail on the head.) It makes you pay attention to every word of dialogue, explore every nuance of what the characters say and compare the concept of each item with the different and often abstract meanings it can have. This style of gaming also TEACHES people to think differently. If you are stuck and you blunt force the puzzle, once the solution is found, usually you immediately understand what the developer was thinking. The "Monkey wrench" puzzle in Monkey Island 2 is a perfect example. It is rewarding in its own way. You have the frustration of the logic of the puzzle, which you didn't get enough to solve the puzzle, but you also get a bit into to mind of the creators, which helps you to solve other puzzles later on. "Using a monkey on the valve? Why wasn't the solution a wrench? Monkey... wrench... *groan* Ahhh! Those tricksy devs! I'll have to think differently." I think the real balance is having enough items to be time consuming to blunt force a puzzle while not making it unfeasible to blunt force puzzles. Then you can teach the player to play your game. The experience has a greater impact because it teaches you to look at things another way, all the time. I also think this is why adventure games are remembered so fondly. Broken Age has wonderful visuals and entertaining dialogue, I don't think it is a game people will abandon in frustration because they want their hand held in gameplay.
  21. Same here. And I fully agree that some little tidbit of dialogue when picking up the knife would have helped. But I also tried using the knife in lots of inappropriate ways, and didn't get the snappy words I would have expected from that character. I tried using the knife on the various yarn friends. Shay says sensible things, sure, but it would have been hilarious if the knife had ridiculously stern things to say as well.
  22. You know, this could probably be fixed super easily by flipping the whole area. If you walked in from the peach puzzle side, an accidental fall would be much less likely to solve a puzzle, and the peach may become more of an obvious point of investigation. I never bothered with the peach until I got the riddle later in the game.
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