Puzzles Too Hard, Or Am I Just Too Stupid / Lazy?

[watchful]

#4143

Even having played before, albeit with some help, decades ago and being a more seasoned adult adventurer now, I still found the original DOTT quite challenging.

With three different characters+locations of possibilities, a quickly growing number of lingering inventory items, many partially-solvable puzzles early on, the wacky logic, and few sign-posts (that I noticed) the difficulty seemed uneven and sometimes brutal.

IMO adventure games should have difficulty sliders or options for things like hotspot highlighting, consistently auto-removing no-longer necessary items, and more or fewer dialog hints.

Is it just me?

[firefyte]

#4144

The remake does have hotspot highlighting.

Some of the puzzles are esoteric enough that they require knowledge of US history, which isn’t ideal. Others are really trial and error, or guided by subtle lines by looking at things. If you tell us where you are, we can nudge you in the right direction.

Luckily you can exchange items quickly by drag/dropping.

[Tijn]

#4148

Yeah, DOTT is definitely a “try everything with every other thing” kind of game.

On the one hand it’s cool how you’re never really truly stuck, because of the sheer number of things available to you pretty early on. There’s almost always something you can try somewhere and manage to get a little progress.

But on the other hand I can see how it can be a bit overwhelming, because it’s really quite a complex game.

I don’t think there’s any shame in looking up hints, but if you want to avoid that and still feel you’re stuck, please don’t hesitate to reach out for help here. I’m sure there are plenty people who are willing to help out without spoiling the game.

[TigerQuoll]

#4151

I probably had more time on my hands when I first played it as a teenager, but I never felt fully stuck for long. With enough of rubbing everything against everything else, eventually something always gave.
(Since then I’ve played it so much I could finish it in my sleep)

I’ve slowly come to the realisation that while some people can treat adventure games like puzzle games where you can logically figure out the solutions, I can’t. I’ve sort of shifted my thinking so that it’s more like a “secret finding” game where you just have to slow down, be patient and slowly comb through all your options until you stumble on the way forward.

[dr_st]

#4161

I recall I got stuck twice during the playthrough, for a day or more each time. Not going to say exactly on what, so as to avoid spoiling, but in retrospective, these things, while not obvious, were definitely something that can be deduced (and in the end I did figure them both out without resorting to hints).

It felt something like “OK, I absolutely know that I need to get this item, or to do something with this thing here”. So even if nothing is obvious, I’m going to try everything in this room/area, until I find something that works. Oh, was that it? Yeah, I guess I could have thought about that earlier, haha.”

[dollarone]

#4163

agree with the dr – puzzles can be hard but are kind of logical. I always compare DOTT with Sam&Max, and I think the thing that puts DOTT slightly above, is exactly that. I got completely stuck a couple of times in Sam&Max, and the solution was extremely random (but of course, also funny!)

[brezhtnev]

#4164

I hate to look up hints when playing adventure games and tend to delay it until I’m really at my wit’s end. If I do have to resort to hints, I always first check https://www.uhs-hints.com, which provides hints with decreasing subtlety, so one doesn’t have to surrender completely to “cheating”.

Illogical solutions can drive me mad! If you’re into that sort of thing, however, I can recommend the Gobliiins series. I believe *all* of the solutions are completely random!

I happened to be playing Bureaucracy recently; good if you want a tough, but somehow still fair, challenge. In this one, you can get stuck, so: save often and don’t be afraid to restart the game now and then to see whether you missed something.

[watchful]

#4165

Thanks all. Yeah, I did resort to the UMS system, which is a nice fallback when one doesn’t have a lot of friends 😉

Next time I’ll try asking here first.