800 gamers tried to beat an '80s adventure without a walkthrough—only 2 did
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Only .25% completed the AGAT: the Adventure Game Aptitude Test, designed by fiendish developer Woe Industries.
Skua
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152d

From the moon logic puzzle entry on the game’s own page’

Practically every puzzle in the game requires the player to either use highly unconventional logic, or be a psychic:

Can’t open the garage? You’d think you need to find the garage opener, right? Wrong. You need to use a workout machine, then open it with pure strength.

How does one open an envelope? With their hands? Or through a microwave? (Mind, you can open the envelope with your hands — you just shouldn’t, because that tears it, making it unusable for re-mailing, which is crucial for several characters’ paths through the game. It’ll depend on your team composition whether you can get past that or not.)

Yeah fuck this game

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92d

Admittedly, I haven’t played MM further than the first few minutes, I like old adventure games (esp. LucasArts ones), but just haven’t bothered with this one.

I suspect the garage puzzle probably has some hint, like “it’s too heavy/I’m not strong enough” when attempting to open it, so the player atleast can figure out that strength training is a thing. Still a bit of a stretch, as it’s cartoon logic to actually become stronger after one workout - but… it is a cartoony comedy game.

The envelope thing sounds like one of those “needs a crystal ball” -things that many of the games of the era unfortunately had. I don’t think people even at the time appreciated the “dead man walking” -design. Must be fun for the softlock to become apparent hours or days later. It’s just a dick move design-wise.

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32d

Crystal ball drsign was usually intentional, to make the game last longer

Most of game design then was finding creative ways to stretch their resources to make a game last longer

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12d

No doubt about it. Still feels bad to step on those landmines. :P

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22d

On the other hand, should a game be designed to allow you to do all the things in one playthrough? Personally, I like when a game gives you different paths and reasons to replay it.

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42d

doing everything in one playthrough is not the same as softlocking the game. Exclude one path, sure. Softlock? Bullshit.

Skua
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32d

There are others way to achieve those end goals, though. Mutually exclusive paths are usually going to feel much better than some unforeseeable bullshit

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