Just as with the acorn – example above, we had known what we had to do – we just didn't have done the rather demanding and sometimes obscure standards of the game. The key was to use a glowing gem as a light source that my brother and I had understood for a long time. The problem was the text parser, who demanded that we “put precious stones in the mouth” to use his light in the tunnels. There was no other place to place the gem, no other way to hold it or confirm it. (We have tried them all.) No other attempts to use the light of this radiant crystal, how clear, well -intended or expressed, would work. You put the gem in your mouth, or you died in the darkness.
Returning from my respect to the conversation in hand, I caught the cynical comment of Ars Senior Editor Lee Hutchinson that this kind of puzzles' was the only way to make 2-3 hours of 'game' for months. “This seemed rather shocking, almost offensive. How could one say something like the games that have colored my memories of childhood?
So I decided to play again Space Quest II For the first time in 35 years in an attempt to defend my own past.
Big mistake.
We are no longer on Endor, Dorothy.
Play it again, Sam
In my memory, the Space Quest series was filled with sharply written humor, smart puzzles and enchanting art. But when I had taken the original version of the game, I discovered that only one of these was true. Despite its blockiness and limited colors, the art remained charming.
With regard to gameplay, the puzzles were not so much “smart” as “annoying”, “obvious” or (more often) “rather unclear”.
Finding the glowing jewel discussed above requires that you swim in a small place of a river with multiple screens, without prior indications that something is important at that exact location. Trying to “call” a hunter that you have caught, does nothing … until you do it a second time. And the less said about trying to throw a puzzle to a Labian Terror Beast, typing different word per mutations while death comes down on you, the better.
