Okay we’re back, this time with some stupid puzzles from King’s Quest V. King’s Quest V was the first game of its kind to be in VGA (256 colors), and it’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s so gorgeous in fact that the designers seem to have decided that it would be excessively generous to make it logical and playable as well. The thing is just chock-full of dead ends and nonsensical puzzles. Here are two of the worst:
At one point you have to venture into a spooky forest and vanquish an evil witch. When you try to depart the forest however, you find that you’re trapped in a magical sort of time-space loop, treading the same paths over and over. Take a minute to imagine how you might escape from this predicament. Got any ideas?
If so, I’m 100% sure one of them was not, “Pour some peanut butter on the ground, and then drop jewels in the peanut butter, so that a greedy fairy who you’ve never heard of before will rush out of the bushes and get himself stuck in the peanut butter. If you free him, he’ll help you out.”
Yeah, no joke. That’s actually what you have to do. And even if you somehow get it into your head to pour peanut butter on the ground, it only works in one particular spot — one totally arbitrary spot. Good luck figuring that one out.
Later in the game you’re crossing some snowy mountains. As you pass a cave mouth, a yeti comes racing toward you, and you have about two seconds to react before being disemboweled. So basically you die, restore your game, and have enough time to try using one inventory item against the yeti before you die and have to restore again, etc. Almost certainly the very last object in your inventory that you would think to use is your fresh-baked pie:
Yeah, that’s right, the solution to the yeti “puzzle” is to give him the old pie-in-the-face. What the hell? Okay, using a mirror against Medusa, that makes sense. Using a crucifix against a vampire, fine. But using a freaking pie against a yeti? WTF?
It’s honey actually, rather than peanut butter.
Also, that section of forest has eyes watching you, but I can’t remember what happens if you look at the eyes (may give you a clue, Quest games were funny like that).
Otherwise, you’re spot on, they’re both situations which you require certain items and to use them at the right time.
A worse one that you should have mentioned was saving the rat from the cat (so it can chew through your bonds when you’re captured by the innkeeper). You get one shot, and it’s very easy to miss.
Also, don’t you get the pie ages before that point in the game? Worse, it’s optional to acquire and you can EAT it, thus making it impossible to progress at this point…
That’s my hazy recollection, anyway.
Yes, you could miss several items and get stuck in a variety of ways. Some items had multiple potential uses, but only one intended use.
Par for the course in many Sierra adventure games though, and those of us that started way back with KQ1 just got used to saving a lot and being frustrated at times.
Remember, we didn’t have the internet to look for help, and I wasn’t in the US so I couldn’t even ring the help lines!