History MoonLogicPuzzle / AdventureGames

* ''Videogame/Earthbound1994'' parodies these. Getting past a giant statue of a pencil, for example, requires you to obtain and use a [[spoiler:[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Pencil Eraser.]]]] And to get past an eraser statue? [[spoiler: Eraser Eraser.]]

* ''VideoGame/AnotherCode'':
** The game has a puzzle where you had to close the DS enough so you could see the reflection of one of the screens on the other without closing it so much it went into standby mode. It also had no hints other then the fact that it was simply a photo frame that folded the same way. Also, should you be playing without a backlight on, good luck seeing the reflection- or, for that matter, be using one of the more recent versions of the DS, in which case the two halves of the clue will not line up properly. Fortunately, simple brute force also works for solving the puzzle.

* Early on in the 1986 game ''The Very Big Cave Adventure'', you come across a small spring with a little fence by it. After this, you can expect to wander aimlessly until you realise that the whole point of the game is to find valuable objects and take them to the fence for money. Yeah, ''that'' sort of fence.

* ''VideoGame/PoliceQuest: Open Season'': The skeleton key you have to obtain from a mundane-looking soda can, and the lighter in the mouth of the severed head in the refrigerator, which you combine with a can of hairspray to make a flamethrower to neutralize the Big Bad (the lighter isn't there the first time you look in the fridge, GuideDangIt).

* ''VideoGame/TheDig'' has places where you can't use certain items until you progress to the point where you need them. There is a patch of dirt that you can't interact with until you do several other things, and a rock that you can't interact with until you enter a particular code into a map room.

* ''VideoGame/OutOfOrder'' has a couple:

** ''VideoGame/KingsQuestIIRomancingTheThrone'' has a point where you're blocked by a [[MemeticMutation pOIsonous snake.]] You can kill it with your sword (which even has a snake inscribed on it, inclining players to think that's what they're supposed to do), but the '''correct''' thing to do is to throw a bridle at it so it becomes a talking pegasus. Even the novelized walkthrough in The King's Quest Companion, which makes a point that Graham can be an eccentric and a daydreamer to explain how he just happens to blunder into the correct solutions to the games' more counter-intuitive puzzles, couldn't come up with a better explanation for this one than Graham threw the bridle completely by accident.
*** The FanRemake splits it into several puzzles, but using an opal necklace to stun the snake so you can get past, create an AntiMagic item in the sorcerer's home, use it on the snake, and THEN get the bridle using a SolveTheSoupCans riddle is only marginally less out there.

* A puzzle in the "oddly-angled" room within ''VideoGame/{{Zork}} II'' required the player to traverse it in the traditional directions of a baseball field, starting from home plate: southeast, northeast, northwest, southwest. Though hinted with various baseball puns and equipment in the room, the concept seems out of place in the fantasy setting, not to mention kind of unfair for non-American players. And even for Americans who [[NoSenseOfDirection just don't know the compass directions]] of baseball fields. Not to mention the necessity of assuming (for no good reason) that home plate is on the west corner of the diamond.[[labelnote:Here's why]]Because before electric lighting, games were played in the afternoon. Home plate was placed in the west corner so batters would be facing east, away from the setting sun. This is also why a left-handed pitcher is called a "southpaw": with home plate in the west corner, a left-hander throws with his southernmost hand.[[/labelnote]] In the hint book they even apologised for what a difficult puzzle it was, in particular for non-American Zorkers.

* ''VideoGame/GabrielKnight 3'' [[http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html was accused]] by Website/OldManMurray of being an excellent example of [[GenreKiller what killed adventure games]]: themselves. It featured a very nonsensical puzzle that includes using honey on an old piece of tape to steal hair from a cat, to make a fake mustache, to impersonate someone, to get a motorcycle, because the hero refuses to drive a scooter. The guy you are impersonating doesn't have a mustache. You also need to steal his driver's license and find a pen, to draw a mustache on his picture. The last part makes some sense, as an eye-catching feature on a face draws attention away from a face's bone shape, and other characters hint at this; but it does nothing to explain how cat hair glued with maple syrup can make a convincing moustache.
** In addition, the article highlighted there was an InterfaceScrew aspect as well; several objects involved in the puzzle don't show up as interactive ''until'' you've reached the point in the plot where the puzzle must be solved, but at the same time they have nothing particular to do with the puzzle, so the only way to find them was to visit every previous location and mouse over everything to find if something had become available that wasn't before.
** How notorious is this puzzle? It has its own dedicated page [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_hair_mustache_puzzle On the other Wiki, with multiple sources to discuss the puzzle's legacy]].

*** At a certain point you have to find something to turn off a pump to reveal a pathway behind a waterfall. The solution was to plug a hypnotized monkey into the pump and turning its tail. Yup, it's a [[VisualPun monkey wrench]]. Bonus points to players of non-English versions, because [[LostInTranslation that's not a puzzle that translates very well]] -- the Spanish version of the game, for one, resorted to putting a book in the Phatt Library which flat-out tells you that monkeys can be used as "English wrenches", the Spanish equivalent of "monkey wrenches".

** And then there's the one you solve using something an NPC said to you in passing ''in an optional conversation'' 8-ish hours (or four in-world years) ago. You need to find something that can be used as fuel. You have a coffee mug. There is a coffin full of packing foam. There is a room with a toaster that catches fire if you put buttered bread in it. The station employees will put out the fire using fire extinguishers if that happens. [[spoiler:Fill the mug with packing foam, place it next to the toaster, and put bread and butter in the toaster. The fire extinguisher spray will chemically react with the packing foam and make the mug jet around the room.]] If you missed the optional conversation or forgot about it, you have absolutely no way of knowing that [[spoiler:the extinguishers and packing foam will react together like that]].

* In ''VideoGame/{{Phantasmagoria 2}}'', one of the first puzzles you must solve is getting your wallet out from under the couch. You can [[ICantReachIt very clearly reach all the way under there with your hands]] (though the actor makes a valiant effort to pretend otherwise when you try), and could likewise move the couch itself without difficulty (this option doesn't present itself). The solution is to entice your pet rat to fetch it for you with a granola bar. If you listed the hundred most intuitive ways to retrieve a wallet from under a couch, this almost certainly wouldn't be on there.

* An example of when this goes wrong can be found in an obscure adventure game called ''The Crystal Key''. At one point, you're in an alien docking bay, trying to get a ship to take off before a Darth Vader {{Expy}} can find you and force-choke you. All the keys on the ship's control panel are labeled in an alien language. You're supposed to have written down the coordinates of the ship you docked at the very beginning, then you're supposed to enter in those same coordinates. Apparently, it's taken for granted not only that you remember the coordinates, but that you'll know the aliens use base-10, arrange their keys in the same order as on a telephone number pad, and use the same coordinate system as is found in your ship. Note in particular that the keys are arranged as on a ''telephone'' keypad, with 123 at the top. Which, of course, is different from the layout of the PC keypad that's likely to be closer at hand for someone playing the game.

* ''Death Gate'' had two infuriating puzzles of this type.

** ''VideoGame/KingsQuestIIRomancingTheThrone'' has a point where you're blocked by a [[MemeticMutation pOIsonous snake.]] You can kill it with your sword (which even has a snake inscribed on it, inclining players to think that's what they're supposed to do), but the '''correct''' thing to do is to throw a bridle at it so it becomes a talking pegasus. Even the novelized walkthrough in The King's Quest Companion, which makes a point that Graham can be an eccentric and a daydreamer to explain how he just happens to blunder into the correct solutions to the games' more counter-intuitive puzzles, couldn't come up with a better explanation for this one than that Graham threw the bridle completely by accident.

* ''VideoGame/CodenameIceman'' was bad about this kind of puzzle. In one instance, you had to have the installation manual handy so you could manually type in the correct (according to the manual) procedure for giving CPR and in some cases, to get from one setting to the next, you might have to take an action that would result in getting stalled in the next scene.

*** Casting the "Make Rain" spell might qualify. You need to combine three different liquids in a teapot. There are no teapots in the game, and the only hint (not explicitly mentioned in the game itself) is that the old hunter's lamp looks a bit like a teapot. Considering that in a previous game (''VideoGame/KingsQuestIIIToHeirIsHuman'') spells had to be cast ''exactly'' according to the [[AllThereInTheManual instructions]] (it doubled as the game's CopyProtection, so failure meant HaveANiceDeath), it's easy for veteran gamers to be WrongGenreSavvy on this one.

* ''Videogame/Earthbound1983'' parodies these. Getting past a giant statue of a pencil, for example, requires you to obtain and use a [[spoiler:[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Pencil Eraser.]]]] And to get past an eraser statue? [[spoiler: Eraser Eraser.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Paradigm}}'', being a surrealist point-and-click adventure game that pays homage to obtuse point-and-click adventures from the 90s, is chock full of these. For example, the puzzle to obtain crack for the local drug addict so he'd let you have some backup disks needed for the power plant's computer so it doesn't melt down. This requires solving a three-layer nested puzzle that requires you to move around several locations and can take several hours to solve if you don't know what you're doing. Even if you know what you're doing, it takes about half an hour to move around and solve the puzzles. And no, it doesn't get easier once you gain access to the drug dealer's mansion.* In ''VideoGame/{{Phantasmagoria 2}}'', one of the first puzzles you must solve is getting your wallet out from under the couch. You can [[ICantReachIt very clearly reach all the way under there with your hands]] (though the actor makes a valiant effort to pretend otherwise when you try), and could likewise move the couch itself without difficulty (this option doesn't present itself). The solution is to entice your pet rat to fetch it for you with a granola bar. If you listed the hundred most intuitive ways to retrieve a wallet from under a couch, this almost certainly wouldn't be on there.

* Here's the worst from ''VideoGame/DiscworldII'', which was somewhat saner, and where most puzzles made sense if you read the books. You need some sticks. That's easy -- steal the mallets from croquet players by swapping them with something similar, so that they wouldn't notice. One is simple: a hammerhead shark, who does look like a mallet. Another is OK, if you remember ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'': a flamingo. The third is [[spoiler:a pelican]]. What leap of logic connects it with croquet is unclear.

* ''Mudlarks'' has several puzzles which combine moon logic with apparent psychosis. Early in the game, the player character gets trapped in a quarantine tent which they were supposed to be just visiting. The solution? Yank an electrical cable on the floor, causing the panel it's connected to to begin sparking, then throw water or it! The character does notice that they've broken the law several times later in the adventure, but never considers the potential consequences of starting an electrical fire in a tent where genuinely sick people are sleeping.