Hardest puzzle EVER!!!!!!

[Terramax]

OK I'm sure this has been covered in some form but lets make the definitive list. There's got to be a single puzzle that's considered the most obtuse, ridiculous ever. I've heard the last puzzle in Schism required literally trial and error and there are over 1000 combinations.

Anyone?

[QFG]

I'm not familiar with that puzzle, but if that's true it's got to be a prime candidate.

I'm going to nominate "Infection" - the Go-style bacteria puzzle in The 7th Guest. Not only was there NO "solution" - you just had to improve at the game until you got very lucky and outplayed the devious (and ingenious) AI - but, for me at least, it came early in the game and really killed momentum.

If Stauf had simply put in a dozen variants of the bacteria puzzle in his mansion, no one would ever have learned his secrets, trust me. He would've been home free.

A lot of people nominate the "retrieve the key" sequence in The Longest Journey, but I didn't have problems with that, and my wife literally solved it at first glance.

Looking back, I thought that the entire first sequence of KQIII was devilishly hard, ESPECIALLY the spell-making.

[Endosanity]

I would say answering any question in Zombieville. If you picked the wrong answer, you died. Only numerous trial and error would yield the answer after you died, reloaded, and died again over and over again.

[Jeysie]

I don't know if the Babel Fish puzzle in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the hardest puzzle ever, but IMHO it's a solid candidate for *evilest* puzzle.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[crabapple]

OK I'm sure this has been covered in some form but lets make the definitive list. There's got to be a single puzzle that's considered the most obtuse, ridiculous ever. I've heard the last puzzle in Schism required literally trial and error and there are over 1000 combinations.

Schizm was full of difficult puzzles, but they were all clued somewhere.

[QFG]

Oooooh... forgot about the Babel Fish puzzle. That WAS dastardly in every way.

[Fien]

:D Oooooh... forgot about the Babel Fish puzzle. That WAS dastardly in every way.

Hm... there must be hundreds of develish puzzles I couldn't do without some help, but the Babelfish isn't one of them, I solved it without blinking an eye. Piece of cake.

[Bobske]

Hardest puzzle ever was the Chinese Checkers puzzle in Shivers :)

[Gazzoid]

I'd probably nominate that picture sliding puzzle in The Black Mirror. That puzzle really does my tree in and i dread it whenever i play the game. I think i've only ever successfully cracked it once and i can't seem to do it again. It causes the game to grind to a halt and i find it tedious just randomly moving the blocks around hoping i get it.

[Greywing]

The 'Rubber Ducky' puzzle in The Longest Journey.

April needs to get a key that's caught on a subway rail. She has a rubber glove. That doesn't work. You need to find a clothes line, a rubber ducky and a band aid to combine with the rubber glove into an improbable contraption to lift the key off the rail. The worst part was a total lack of indication that you needed to find or combine those items or even how the end item worked. It was a serious error in logic and seemed to only extend the game and frustrate players. I don't know anyone who solved that puzzle without asking online.

[Ariel Type]

Figuring out the code in Feeble Files. Clever, inventive puzzle, which is also damn hard.

[Fien]

Figuring out the code in Feeble Files. Clever, inventive puzzle, which is also damn hard.

Yep, way too hard. The paint puzzle was impossible as well. For me, that is. I should be ashamed to admit that it took me a loooong time to figure out the step-by-step instructions in the walkthrough. :crazy: But I'm not. I solved the Babelfish. ;)

[Gazzoid]

I don't know anyone who solved that puzzle without asking online.

Me. :D

[AFGNCAAP]

I don't know if the Babel Fish puzzle in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the hardest puzzle ever, but IMHO it's a solid candidate for *evilest* puzzle.I agree, with the disclaimer that its alignment is lawful evil. ;) Even though I did get stuck and mildly frustrated on the last stage of the puzzle, I never stopped feeling that I'm in on the joke (rather than that the game is hampering my progress just because). It's totally subjective, of course.

I'd probably nominate that picture sliding puzzle in The Black Mirror. That puzzle really does my tree in and i dread it whenever i play the game. I think i've only ever successfully cracked it once and i can't seem to do it again. It causes the game to grind to a halt and i find it tedious just randomly moving the blocks around hoping i get it.Hm. I guess there is one problem with this puzzle, ie.

the use of Zodiac signs,

which, (judging from the bad reputation the puzzle gets) aren't as commonly identifiable as the designers assumed. But if you've got that part right, it's the most mundane version of the slider puzzle, isn't it?

I don't know anyone who solved that puzzle without asking online.Me. :DAnd me. And:
A lot of people nominate the "retrieve the key" sequence in The Longest Journey, but I didn't have problems with that, and my wife literally solved it at first glance.

[noknowncure]

I don't know anyone who solved that puzzle without asking online.

Me too, I'm afraid.

[Davies]

The "bacteria" thing in The 7th Guest is, strictly speaking, a game and not a puzzle. You're competing directly against an AI opponent. The idea of having several puzzles and then a "boss" game against Stauf to end each level was spelled out much more clearly in The 11th Hour.

I'll agree that the solitaire ("Chinese checkers") in Shivers was horrendous for me personally, because I've never been able to solve peg-jumping puzzles. Like sliders, they're something you either have a knack for or you don't. But it had the advantage of being a very traditional, standard puzzle. I instantly said, "I know what that is, I know what to do, and I know I can't do it", and went and looked it up in a puzzle book. That's my solution, and I stand by it.

The marble-flipping thing in Shivers was very challenging, and would have been impossible to solve by trial and error, but again it was at least easy to understand what the goal was. I solved it fairly easily once I mapped it out on paper, and it was tremendously satisfying to get right.

The REALLY hard puzzles are the unfair ones, where you don't even know what the problem is or what you're supposed to do.

[Risingson]

Name a game by Detallion. Pick a puzzle. Yes, that one.

[Bobske]

The REALLY hard puzzles are the unfair ones, where you don't even know what the problem is or what you're supposed to do.

You mean like all the puzzles in the Goblins series!

My god! My head still hurts! :)

[cwapitm]

Well, I hate mechanical or Myst style puzzles because I find them the hardest. Other than that, the maze and gem puzzles in Legend of Kyrandia were very hard.

[GhostPirateLechuck]

I had a very hard time with several MI4 puzzles. It took me forever to get the hang of the whole dual realm swamp scene. I figured out the clock, direction puzzle after a while. The hard part was talking to Guybrush from the future and figuring out the correct order.

Another toughie was the rock puzzle where you had to bang the rocks off eachother fromt he seperate holes in order to direct the main rock where it needs to be.

Another was the dumb combat sequence.

[QFG]

I do remember the swamp puzzle in MI4 being pretty hard.

I had issues also with the entire diving sequence, which took me forever.

The rock puzzle made sense after long, careful study - but I agree in principle.

***

As for the Game-within-a-Game in 7th Guest... well, ok, but in a game comprised otherwise of nothing but puzzles and out-of-sequence movie clips, this one really stole the show. As a kid, with no knowledge of Go, I spent hours trying to beat that damned computer; I don't think I've spent hours on any other single puzzle.

[Vina]

I had a very hard time with several MI4 puzzles.

I had a lot of problems with the Lua Bar, personally. It was bad enough trying to find something that would jam into the gears and time it just right, but then you have to figure out why the flame isn't setting the painting on fire. :crazy:

[QFG]

I thought MI4 had the hardest puzzles, by far, in the series. Very very tricky!

[Nelza]

I thought the Bones on the Doors puzzle was incredibly hard in Monkey Island 2 because I didn't realise you could walk through them! :D

I remember spending hours just turning all the doors thinking that it would open up a hidden door or something, then finally gave in to a walkthrough.

But then the walkthrough didn't actually state walking through the doors either so I was still stuck! I finally got my dad to have a go and he walked through the first one he turned... aaaugh!!!

I finished it in seconds after that. :\

The hardest puzzles for me seem to be the ones that use common-sense. LOL!

[AFGNCAAP]

The hard part was talking to Guybrush from the future and figuring out the correct order.

:crazy: I may be forgetting something, but weren't you supposed to simply

repeat the conversation as it occured "the first time"?

[noknowncure]

I thought the Bones on the Doors puzzle was incredibly hard in Monkey Island 2 because I didn't realise you could walk through them! :D

I remember spending hours just turning all the doors thinking that it would open up a hidden door or something, then finally gave in to a walkthrough.

But then the walkthrough didn't actually state walking through the doors either so I was still stuck! I finally got my dad to have a go and he walked through the first one he turned... aaaugh!!!

I finished it in seconds after that. :\

The hardest puzzles for me seem to be the ones that use common-sense. LOL!


It wasn't until a couple of years after I'd first finished MI2, that someone pointed out to me that the map to that area was contained in the song your skeleton parents sang. Prior to that, I'd just blundered through, saving the game constantly until finally arriving.

[Bagpuss]

What about getting Zoe out of the cave at the beginning of Dreamfall?

You need to play a tune that you heard once with no indication that it was important.

I also found getting the key in TLJ easy, figuring it out after just one hint from April (possibly the only hint she has, I'm not sure).

[ozzie]

I read some complaints about this specific puzzle in Dreamfall now. I didn't like it either, but it didn't seem very hard to me.
I solved it while I even forgot about this melody.

After I tried to solve it with trial & error I pondered how this puzzle could work.
Then I noticed that the background score had four (or five?) tones which stuck out. I tried it with them and it worked.
It was a nice hint, actually.

I wonder why no one mentioned the monkey wrench puzzle in MI2.
Okay, it isn't really hard in the english version, since it is a wordplay.
But I played the german one. And it made absolutely no sense!! There was no proper hint (only a half one, that the monkey looked somehow stiff).
Other really hard puzzles?
Hm.........yeah, slider puzzles. I suck at those. I was deeply frustrated with the one in Black Mirror. Luckily I found a savegame somewhere on the internet so I could skip it. I HATE those.
And I was furious when I found one in "Shadow of the Comet", too. A walkthrough helped me through there.

[Jelena]

What about getting Zoe out of the cave at the beginning of Dreamfall?
I agree. That wasn't a fair puzzle. I hardly noticed that tune.

[GhostPirateLechuck]

:crazy: I may be forgetting something, but weren't you supposed to simply

repeat the conversation as it occured "the first time"?

Yes, but you had to trade items, say the right words, the right times. Couple all that with the tricky clock sequences and you have a very tough scene.

[crabapple]

Name a game by Detallion. Pick a puzzle. Yes, that one.
The first Schizm game was difficult, and some of the puzzles in Reah also. But most of the puzzles in their later games were either easy or medium difficulty. There were a couple that were tedious, but not really difficult to figure out the puzzle. Of course the Tower puzzle had a bug, which made it impossible to solve (like the key and bandaid puzzle in TLJ).

[crabapple]

I do remember the swamp puzzle in MI4 being pretty hard.

The Myst o' Tyme puzzle? That's one of my favorite puzzles.

[Terramax]

It probably doesn't beat the hardness of some of the ones you all mention, but I've never figured out the logic behind the lock picking puzzle in Still Life (I'm currently playing Post Mortem and I'm kinda reliving that puzzle again).

I still can't think of any clue regarding how to complete them. For me a puzzle becomes hard without clues. If I'm not given a point to start at I generally fail.

Also, I'm a sucker for not spotting things in detail, so the elevator in Grim Fandango stumpted me.

So what is it about these definitive puzzles that drive you all crazy?
Is it that there are no clues, that there are so many possible options?
There's just too much to think about all at once?

[träum_was_schönes]

It is always fun to read the responses to questions like these since it just shows us once again that people are different and have different strengths.

As soon as someone nominates their hardest puzzle another comes along and mentions that that was their favorite and easy:P .

I would think that it probably has to do with a persons personal logic/word/mechanical skills but I am not sure if some people just can't do certain puzzles even if they are great at the "real life" counterpoint. I for one can't combine items to save my life but as I am not sure what the real world equivalent to combine this *old piece of pizza, small magnet from a fishtank,rusty picture wire, and salt* would be, I guess I can't test my theory;)

*_*just an example, not from a real game.

[Psychocandy]

Journey to the Centre of the Earth had a couple of interesting ones. Namely the sound puzzle and the "fit these tiles around the door in an order that makes no Goddamn sense at all" puzzle.

Incidentally, trying to understand what the hell is going on in Pathologic is almost a puzzle in itself. Didn't stop me becoming addicted to it, though!

[Bagpuss]

I think träum's on to something by trying to think of real-life counterparts. We don't tend to solve things in reality by bodging together an unlikely collection of items (unless we're doing DIY). When we search we move around and look behind objects, not stay in one place, scanning backwards and forwards, until what we need catches our eyes. I had trouble in Myst because I'd decided a tapestry was a dead end. Turns out I was clicking in the wrong place to go behind it - there's no real-life equivalent of that mistake.

[KamisoriX]

reverse rhyming poetry thingy in SpellCast 101 or 102...forgot which one. It might have been only hard because i hardly knew any english back then... :D

[Risingson]

The first Schizm game was difficult, and some of the puzzles in Reah also. But most of the puzzles in their later games were either easy or medium difficulty. There were a couple that were tedious, but not really difficult to figure out the puzzle. Of course the Tower puzzle had a bug, which made it impossible to solve (like the key and bandaid puzzle in TLJ).

Well, some puzzles in Schizm 2 are damn hard for the same reason they were in Schizm and Reah: if they give you a sliding puzzle, it has about 100 squares, if it is a Hanoi Puzzle, it has 7 levels, and so on. Add to this that Sentinel and Schizm had an engine that sometimes made it difficult to see the results of your actions.

[Nelza]

It wasn't until a couple of years after I'd first finished MI2, that someone pointed out to me that the map to that area was contained in the song your skeleton parents sang. Prior to that, I'd just blundered through, saving the game constantly until finally arriving.

For some reason I'd written that down as it happened so I had all the answers in front of me, I just didn't know that the 'Bone Doors' were doors! I thought they were large tiles that might open up a hidden door or something.

[Wormsie]

I thought the Bones on the Doors puzzle was incredibly hard in Monkey Island 2 because I didn't realise you could walk through them! :D

I remember spending hours just turning all the doors thinking that it would open up a hidden door or something, then finally gave in to a walkthrough.

But then the walkthrough didn't actually state walking through the doors either so I was still stuck! I finally got my dad to have a go and he walked through the first one he turned... aaaugh!!!

I finished it in seconds after that. :\

The hardest puzzles for me seem to be the ones that use common-sense. LOL!I just never found doors that would correspond to the lyric of the song. So in the end I just used trial and error n times to get everything right.

The hardest time I had with CMI in the final puzzle. I always though that the end puzzles suffered because the developers ran out of time. I never realised you were supposed to use the pepper (at that point my inventory was chock full of useless junk).

[Wormsie]

For some reason I'd written that down as it happened so I had all the answers in front of me, I just didn't know that the 'Bone Doors' were doors! I thought they were large tiles that might open up a hidden door or something.I later found out that Guybrush had also written it down, you could look at the lyrics on a piece of paper in his inventory. I never thought that when he said "I've got to write this down!" he meant it literally. :)

[Davies]

Talking about bones and doors, I spent an awful lot of time in Shivers trying to open those vault-door-looking things in the basement, the ones with skulls and skeletal hands on them. I'm still disappointed that they're only there as window dressing.

If there's a door around, it ought to open at some point, dammit.

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

I'm currently playing Obsidian, and the wave puzzle was possibly the most daunting for me so far. Maybe I just didn't get something, but I spent an entire evening just working it, with walkthroughs! None of them made use of the sounds in the puzzle and most hints just said "line 'em up"but that was not enough.

I findly just blundered into the right combo and got past it.

[whimp]

The Sidney "puzzle" in GK3 is by far the hardest and longest puzzle I ever solved in an adventure game. The game itself is also one of the best games i ever played.

[KriD]

"The Door-puzzle" in Journey to the Center of the Earth.

"The Drawing the suspect-puzzle" in Post Mortem.

And, of course, "The Goat" in Broken Sword :P

[Terramax]

"The Drawing the suspect-puzzle" in Post Mortem.


Man that puzzle should have been FUN but it wasn't. I only got the one clue from the bar tender but I'm guessing that the Hotel manager also gave a clue(?). At least he wasn't willing to tell me the clue. I must have chosen the wrong conversation trees earlier on.


And, of course, "The Goat" in Broken Sword :P

Yes, nothing stated that you could do such a thing as run like that. If only I knew that I would have double clicked Stobbart to run everywhere :)

Also, the final puzzle in Achenar's age in Myst IV: Revelation. Trying to get that dinosaur to fall into the pit. It took me Chris knows how long with a guide.

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Did you guys cover the Mangrees (monkey) puzzle in Myst IV: Revelation yet?

[Myth Nocturne]

My vote(s) would go to a few of the puzzles in Evidence: The Last Ritual. There is a strategic light grouping puzzle above a church's name that gave me fits trying to find the 'sweet spot'.

Additionally, some of the online search puzzles in that game were maddeningly difficult.

Of topic: It's a lovely forum you have here!

[Melanie68]

Did you guys cover the Mangrees (monkey) puzzle in Myst IV: Revelation yet?

That was a total game stopper for me. I needed the patch to slow things down so I could do the whole sound thing in time but never got around to doing it. I swore a lot during that puzzle.

Of topic: It's a lovely forum you have here!

Thank you and welcome! :)

[Nelza]

Also, I'm a sucker for not spotting things in detail, so the elevator in Grim Fandango stumpted me.

Did anyone solve that puzzle without consulting a walkthrough? I found it hard even after looking upthe walkthrough.

I also remembered the first puzzle in Silent Hill 3 'Hard Puzzle Mode'. The Shakespearean books were impossible for me to solve having only read 'Romeo and Juliet'. ;(

Did anyone else find the 'mazes' in 'Return to Ringworld' daunting. Back then no-one had created a walkthrough for the game so I had to solve it all on my own. :\ I guess in a way it was quite satisfying. Except that I made the big orange cat climb up the infinite ladder before realising that it was indeed infinite...

[Davies]

The absolutely hardest thing for me to do in Monkey Island (1) was to figure out:

There's more places to go than just around Melee town -- i.e. you have to go back to the lookout point and then turn right, and there's a whole island there!

It stumped me so bad the first time that I quit altogether. When I eventually tried it again, I nearly ended up giving up again. I think it was a stray comment by somebody here that made me go back and look some more.

I honestly don't think it's supposed to be a puzzle, but it threw me so badly that I've posted it as a spoiler, just in case.

[Terramax]

I also remembered the first puzzle in Silent Hill 3 'Hard Puzzle Mode'. The Shakespearean books were impossible for me to solve having only read 'Romeo and Juliet'. ;(


yes, yes, YES, that puzzle seriously hacked me off. Not everyone in the world has read Shakespear, not even here in the UK, such anger.

Did you guys cover the Mangrees (monkey) puzzle in Myst IV: Revelation yet?

You're not on about the one I mentioned above you with the Mangrees jumping about, chucking the fruit at the dino thing?

[noknowncure]

There's more places to go than just around Melee town -- i.e. you have to go back to the lookout point and then turn right, and there's a whole island there!

I've been caught out by strangely placed exits before. The Monkey Island one isn't so bad, but there have been times when I've thought I'd discovered everywhere there was to go, only for there to be another exit.

Runaway 2 had an area during the last chapter where some stairs - that counted as a hotspot themselves - blocked another route that was easy to miss.

Did anyone solve that puzzle without consulting a walkthrough? I found it hard even after looking upthe walkthrough.

I'm proud to say that I managed to complete Grim Fandango without any walkthroughs. Hooray!

[Nelza]

I've been caught out by strangely placed exits before. The Monkey Island one isn't so bad, but there have been times when I've thought I'd discovered everywhere there was to go, only for there to be another exit.

Runaway 2 had an area during the last chapter where some stairs - that counted as a hotspot themselves - blocked another route that was easy to miss.



I'm proud to say that I managed to complete Grim Fandango without any walkthroughs. Hooray!

Wow! That is impressive! Especially the races puzzle!

Which stairs in Runaway 2 were those? I can't recall, I remember in Runaway 1 where I was walking around stuck for hours in the Western Town before realising you could enter the building on the fore-screen... I managed to complete that game without a walkthrough too! Yay!

[Terramax]

In Runaway I was stuck on the first desert section because I didn't know you could go back into the shed you escape from. I moved the cursor so many times under the shet and it never animated to let me go back in. Then I resorted to a walkthrough and it told me it was possible.

In any case, that isn't the same as an 'intentional puzzle', which is what this topic is really about.

[Gazzoid]

In Runaway I was stuck on the first desert section because I didn't know you could go back into the shed you escape from. I moved the cursor so many times under the shet and it never animated to let me go back in. Then I resorted to a walkthrough and it told me it was possible.

That's exactly what happened to me, but i'm happy to say, that apart from that puzzle, i too managed to complete the game without a walkthrough. :)

[Davies]

In Runaway I was stuck on the first desert section because I didn't know you could go back into the shed you escape from. I moved the cursor so many times under the shet and it never animated to let me go back in. Then I resorted to a walkthrough and it told me it was possible.

In any case, that isn't the same as an 'intentional puzzle', which is what this topic is really about.

But how can you be sure what's intentional and what isn't? If an exit is so obscure that you have to come up with a new idea before you find it, I'd call it a puzzle.

I'm not convinced that the Monkey Island one was intended to be a flat-out puzzle so much as a channelling device to ensure you headed for town first. And the Runaway one might have been a simple programming glitch. But they ended up being jaw-breaking challenges just the same, even if only for the two of us!

[crabapple]

Well, some puzzles in Schizm 2 are damn hard for the same reason they were in Schizm and Reah: if they give you a sliding puzzle, it has about 100 squares, if it is a Hanoi Puzzle, it has 7 levels, and so on. Add to this that Sentinel and Schizm had an engine that sometimes made it difficult to see the results of your actions.
I'm not remembering a Hanoi puzzle in Schizm 2 or Sentinel. If there was one, it was considerably easier than the really horrible Hanoi puzzle at the end of Reah, where you couldn't see how many levels you had. Hanoi puzzles aren't difficult so much as they are tedious and boring. The one in Reah was inverted so you couldn't tell whether you had an odd or an even number of levels. The only way to find out was to slowly dig down. I don't see the puzzle as "hardest ever," but it may be the most tedious ever.

I don't remember a sliding puzzle with 100 squares from any of the Detalion games, but there may have been one I don't remember because I had no trouble with it. I do remember a nasty one in Puzz3D Orient Express. (I think it was something like 19 tiles on a side, which would make it 361 pieces.) Some of the pieces wouldn't move so you had to work around them. And four of the tiles were blank. You could put them in any of four spaces, which were located near the four corners of the puzzle. But only one configuration was correct. Of course with my luck I had to rework the puzzle four times in order to get these four pieces in what was considered to be the right spaces.

[noknowncure]

That's exactly what happened to me, but i'm happy to say, that apart from that puzzle, i too managed to complete the game without a walkthrough. :)

I cracked Runaway with no walkthrough too. When I started it, I internally swore I'd not cheat; There was a certain amount of 'try everything on everything' syndrome, but it did the trick! It's another title to add to my - sadly, very short - 'Walkthrough Free' list of games.

My main problem in that regard is that I played most of the backlog of adventure games in my early teens. Unfortunately, my early teen self was terribly impatient. All those genuine classics that my younger self squandered, believing that the genre would remain just as healthy forever.

Er... difficult puzzle-wise, I still don't understand the final problem in The Moment of Silence. It was so massive, and I couldn't be bothered roaming around such a large area when I'd no idea what I was doing anyway.

[QuestVR]

Nibiru rubix cube puzzle

[Nelza]

In Runaway I was stuck on the first desert section because I didn't know you could go back into the shed you escape from. I moved the cursor so many times under the shet and it never animated to let me go back in. Then I resorted to a walkthrough and it told me it was possible.

I was stuck for ages before finding that by accident. I think I was trying to pick things up around the shed and found I could go back in.

[Mieze]

The Sidney "puzzle" in GK3 is by far the hardest and longest puzzle I ever solved in an adventure game. The game itself is also one of the best games i ever played.

I agree that the Le Serpent Rouge Riddle on Sidney was very challenging, but I loved that one. Maybe that is because I am the "Gracie" Type :D

One of the most illogical puzzles I have ever encountered though was the "cat" thing in GK3. I still loved it, but I would have never figured that one out all on my own. :P

[Gazzoid]

When I started it, I internally swore I'd not cheat; There was a certain amount of 'try everything on everything' syndrome, but it did the trick! It's another title to add to my - sadly, very short - 'Walkthrough Free' list of games.

Heh, the 'try everything on everything' method is the one i used for that game as well.

I'm the same when swearing to myself not to cheat. I get a new game, tell myself that i won't cheat and i'll do it myself, and then as soon as i get stuck on a puzzle that's bin bugging me for a few days, i use a hint and then i can't control myself. :frown:

I, to, haven't got a big list of games i've completed myself without cheating. Some of them i cheat through just to unravel the storyline - Scratches was one of those games. Sometimes, if the story's good then i don't regret it as much.

[Boneho Chane]

I'm currently playing Obsidian, and the wave puzzle was possibly the most daunting for me so far. Maybe I just didn't get something, but I spent an entire evening just working it, with walkthroughs! None of them made use of the sounds in the puzzle and most hints just said "line 'em up"but that was not enough.

I findly just blundered into the right combo and got past it.

I LOVED that puzzle. I think you didn't get something though, because I did just that (line am up) and it worked perfectly the first time. The sound does come in use, but not to any point of complication. If I remember correctly, if order to figure out if you lined it up correctly the sound of the waves are supposed to match perfectly to make an even wave rhythem. Like clunk...clunk...clunk rather than clunk-clunk-clunk...clunk...clunk.

[Squeekmore]

I'm pretty sure I'm tone deaf because I can't do music puzzles. For some reason I got the game "9" way back, and that was just one long music puzzle game. Even with a walkthru it was impossible for me to build the Muse and finish.

There are plenty of puzzles that are tough that I don't consider fair, such as the ones mentioned earlier in this thread.

Of the puzzles I think are fair and aren't music based, the toughest one I found was the Grace computer puzzle in GK3.

[Terramax]

Some of them i cheat through just to unravel the storyline - Scratches was one of those games. Sometimes, if the story's good then i don't regret it as much.

I'm having that right now with Post Mortem. The puzzles are quite obscure. I'm close to the end now ( I must be) and there's a puzzle which seems like too much work. I haven't got the time to play this game all the time so...

Also, one scene has kinda freaked me out now so I'm not sure I feel safe enough to wander around the current location freely for too long.

At the moment, in order to sort of not cheat is use a hint based system:

http://www.uhs-hints.com

Seems to do the trick

[nomarch]

One of the most illogical puzzles I have ever encountered though was the "cat" thing in GK3. I still loved it, but I would have never figured that one out all on my own. :P

that was one of the few puzzles i managed to solve by myself in GK3, amazing game but playing through multiple time zones again and again was too much so resorted to a WT.