Wizzard
If I'm reading the description right, this isn't just about convoluted puzzles, it's when there's no obvious reason why solving the puzzle brings you closer to your goal. The Powerpuff Girls example is that a villain has left the heroes a deliberate riddle, the solution to which is the information they're seeking. That doesn't seem to fit.
Similary, Dr Lee in Skin Horse isn't solving multilingual puzzles in the belief that, since they're there, they must have something to do with seeing the org chart; she's been told that that's what she needs to do. There's a clear throughline, even if it's "Anasigma higher-ups are a bunch of arbitrary jerkasses".
Is it me, or does this entry sound really bitchy and like it was written by someone who didn't get the point of adventure games?
- The Lucas Arts Point-and-Click adventure games, such as The Curse of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Sam and Max Hit the Road were infamous for this. The puzzles almost exclusively consisted of picking up some random item and then using it with some other unrelated, unindicated random item maybe 20 hours later in the game. Tentacle had a puzzle in which one had to collect a bundle of spaghetti from the 18th century, flush it down the toilet thus sending it to the 22nd century, and then apply that spaghetti to the head of a mummy to be styled as hair so that said mummy could win a beauty pageant. These games seemed designed with the goal in mind of forcing the player to turn to walkthroughs, as there is no conceivable way they could be worked out logically.
Adventure games have obscure "use item on item"-puzzles? No shit, Sherlock. That's like complaining about action films containing gunfights, or musicals containing lots of singing.
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The point here is that there is no logical reason why one would have to solve the puzzle in the first place.
One does not shake the box containing the sticky notes of doom!
I... figured out the mummy-styling puzzle in a couple of minutes or so. Not sure what that says about me.
I'm not familiar with _Puzzle Pirates_ — I've only heard about it — but it sounds like that game is nothing but this trope.
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The current picture is cute, but I think I found a comic that illustrates this trope perfectly: http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=110507
Good idea. I think we'd only need panels 8-11 to illustrate it.
One does not shake the box containing the sticky notes of doom!
Should this include the Annoying Dog Piano Puzzle in Waterfall in Undertale? Not only is it not required to continue, it also has practically no effect on gameplay (other than dog residue). Plus, the door, piano, statue, and umbrella seem completely unrelated to each other.
One not does simply read this correctly.