Now where did I put my keys?
Items/Equipment in Video Games that are used to solve puzzles and pass by obstacles. These tend to be the treasure of Metroidvania dungeons, but can be seen in all sorts of games. Different than main weapons, Tools will have a specific use only they can do; the hammer in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time can strike foes, but is also the only method for activating rusty switches.
Also common is the enemy that is uniquely vulnerable to a certain tool; Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has Space Pirates with shields that can be ripped away with the Grappling Beam. Often the boss of a dungeon will require that dungeon's tool to defeat it, making it a sort of Puzzle Boss, albeit a simple puzzle.
Since the acquisition of these tools can be quite pivotal to the overall abilities of the character, one can expect the whole dungeon to be designed around the tools it provides. Wandering around the dungeon trying to do everything can be frustrating so a mandatory tutorial puzzle or an Antepiece may be introduced to limit the Trial-and-Error Gameplay to a single room, so the player has some chance to conceptually solve the preceding puzzles without the need to resort to too much Button Mashing.
A variant of this occurs in many FPSes with nonviolent options, allowing the player to use multitools and bobby pins to bypass locks and cigarettes to reveal hidden laser traps.
The Grappling-Hook Pistol and Precision-Guided Boomerang are popular Video Game Tools. See also When All You Have Is a Hammer… for situations where the given tools are the solution for every situation.
The Final-Exam Boss requires that you use most, if not all, of the tools you have collected up till that point in some combination to defeat it. Pretty much guaranteed in any Metroidvania type game.
Super-Trope of Utility Weapon, when a video game weapon can also be a tool.
Examples:
Video Games
- 3D Dot Game Heroes: Boomerang, Bow and Arrow, Shield, Wire Rod, Candle, Lantern, etc.
- Batman: Arkham Asylum: Batman has his usual arsenal of bat-gadgets, which can be used for progression, combat, and sometimes both —the bat-claw, for example.
- Bionic Commando: In the NES version, communicators, flares, and even the bionic arm itself are necessary but not used to damage your enemies directly.
- Despicable Bear: Tools can all be found in the various categories Superheroes, Cold Weapons, Firearms, Explosives, Nano Weapons, Power Of Gods, Winter Party and Misc''.
- Deus Ex: Lock picks, Multitools, and Fire Extinguishers. Furthermore, you also had Rebreathers and Hazmat Suits to overcome obstacles.
- Dwarf Fortress: The game offers several. Axe and Pick (Mining skill gets trained a lot) also double as good weapons; others, not so much.
- Eternal Darkness: Alex Roivas starts investigating her family home in Rhode Island, and nearly every door inside is locked with no obvious means of opening them; you even break the key for the upstairs hallway upon using it. Instead, by reading the game's Tome of Eldritch Lore, you acquire magickal spells which allow you to enchant, dispel, or reveal various facets of the mansion, gradually opening it up in combination with more expected items to use to solve little setpieces.
- Hack 'N' Slash: Hacking the game's code gives you tools such as a magic sword (and later a boomerang) that can change variables and reprogram objects; artifacts let you edit specific game parameters; special bombs allow you literally modify the actual game code that makes up various objects in the game.
- Hero of the Kingdom: Accomplishing the assorted tasks laid out for the heroes requires a lot of equipment. This includes not only weaponry and food, but also fishing lures, herb baskets, hammers, wood, pickaxes, and a wide variety of other objects. Fortunately, the inventory is limitless (and neatly organized).
- The Legend of Zelda: Most games have an item or two whose main purpose is clearly not battle, but which can still be weaponized in some form.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The Spinner is largely a movement tool, allowing you to climb certain walls and boost your speed quickly, but its "burst" move can be used to attack enemies. Even the humble Empty Bottle can be used to reflect certain attacks!
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The Hookshot is excellent at this. You can use it to one-hit kill the small Moblins in the annoying Lost Woods hedge maze and stun the extremely annoying giant Moblin guarding the way to the Forest Temple.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The line between "tool" and "weapon" is blurred —weapons can be used to break ore, chop down trees, or light fires; and you can kill enemies with an iron sledgehammer or even a wooden ladle. Durability comes into play instead: yes, you can chop down trees with your Royal Broadsword (attack level 36), but it'll wear the sword down a lot faster than it would a Woodcutter's Axe (attack level 3).
- Minecraft: The player character must craft a wide variety of tools in order to obtain materials and, in turn, craft equipment and weapons. This feature is a central part of the game and gets increasingly complex in two ways. First, the materials that can be mined from the environment are only obtainable if the tools used for it are made of the right materials. And second, materials get rarer and are located in places only accessible with the right tools. For instance, an enchanting table needs a book, two diamonds, and four blocks of obsidian. You get a book by chiseling a shelf with an axe, which is built on a crafting table with wooden sticks and any material from wood to diamond. Diamond ores are found in the lowest layers of the Overworld dimension and can only be mined with a pickaxe made of iron, diamond, or netherite. Obsidian can be produced by dropping water onto a lava pool (or vice versa), for which you need an iron bucket. And so on, and so forth.
- Monster Hunter:
- Various tools are used for gathering materials or titularly hunting the titular monsters. Nets to capture bugs that can be made into medicines; pickaxes for mining ores; bombs that can stun monsters, drive them off from crowded areas, or blow them up for massive damage; Whetstones for sharpening weapons, and so on.
- Monster Hunter: World refines this farther. Each Hunter now has a forearm-mounted slingshot that can shoot rocks or pods for various effects, a grappling hook for climbing, or a net for catching bugs and small animals; and removed the consumability/breakability of many of the other tools. It also added a number of natural tools scattered around each area, such as plants that spilled healing nectar(or poison) and animals that could be grappled to swing or carry hunters around the map.
- MySims: Thera are tools that you earn when the town's commercial Sims have sufficient cumulative satisfaction. Said tools generally open up more of the town, both for moving Sims into empty lots and for finding places where Essence types the player had previously not encountered may be harvested. And no, you cannot use the ax you come already equipped with to chop fallen logs. That falls to the saw, which, yes, must be earned.
- NetHack: Key, lock-pick, and credit card to open locks; stethoscope to appraise enemy statistics; bag, waterproof bag and Bag of Holding to store things; tinning kit to make canned food; can of grease to waterproof your armor; pick-axe to dig holes; candles and lamps to dispel darkness; blindfold and towel to blind yourself from light-based attacks; expensive camera to blind foes with its flash.
- Pokémon: The Mons themselves can be tools for cutting through small trees and smashing boulders out of the way. A few are even usable as a surfboard. Though to be fair, it's more the items used to teach your Pokémon these special moves that would count as the tools.
- Ratchet & Clank: Almost every game gives you a bunch of different gadgets to use for clearing specific obstacles. Every main game has the Swingshot (for swinging or pulling yourself to applicable targets), Grind Boots (for sliding across rails), and Gravity Boots (for walking along ionized pathways), and each game has extra gadgets of its own.
- The Sims 2: Castaway: There are a ton of tools that can be made and are needed to make other tools, clothes, shelter, catch fish, etc. As well, they are often used to cut through the forest, repair bridges, or build boats.
- Terraria: The main tools you get are pickaxes (which let you mine blocks), axes (which can chop down trees and other plants, like cactus), and hammers (which can shape blocks and mine background objects like walls and demon altars). You can pick up other tools as well, like the Rod of Discord, which teleports you to your mouse cursor, or the Clentaminator, a device that can purge (or spread) certain biomes like the Corruption, but only the pickaxes are required for progression.
- Wild ARMs series makes heavy use of various tools to solve puzzles in dungeons.
- In the first three games (1, 2, and 3) each character has a set of three or four tools that they have to find throughout the game. Most of these are mandatory for story dungeons, but a couple of them just provides some utility. Examples of recurring tools include Bombs, Radar, and Grappling Hook.
- Wild ARMs 4 reworks the system. Instead of having tools on you at all times, you just find them lying around dungeons where they can be potentially used. Jude can pick up and use these tools, but they disable jumping, always forcing you to leave them behind. Certain tools can interact with the surroundings, such as swords breaking after several hits so you can throw the handle, or "Wonder Staves" being lit on open fire to shoot projectiles. Radar also returns, in a manner more similar to past games.
- Wild ARMs 5 replaces all tools with Abnormal Ammo for the Dean's ARM but uses them in a manner closer to the first three games. You collect these cartridges over the course of the game and use them for solving puzzles in dungeons (by shooting at things, that is). Grappling Hook and Radar return, albeit under different names.
