Adventure Gamers - Forums

It is no secret that I’m a fan a Daedalic Entertainment, who IMO has been the most reliable provider of high quality adventure game in the last decade or so. It is also no secret that I think that The Dark Eye: Memoria, the second game in the Dark Eye series, is one of the best games released in recent years. So when Zane decided to use it for an adventure game challenge, I thought it natural to also feature it here in the Midweek Puzzle.

The big question is of course which of the many brilliant puzzles in the game is should feature? One of my favourite puzzles, like the early one where you are locked in a completely dark tomb with no obvious means of escape and no light whatsoever?
No, instead I decided to kill two stones with one bird, and feature something that is long overdue:
The Much Dreaded Mazes in form of the forest maze in Memoria.

As mazes go it is a little bit different from the standard. Instead of simply being a question of finding an exit and getting through the maze, then we are following in the footsteps of someone else (literally), and the quest is more about finding the path your “prey” took, than about simply getting through the forest.

This also means that it is not really about mapping the maze, or using trial & error to eliminate all the dead ends, though some trial & error is needed. Instead it is more about paying attention and using your tracking skills to follow the trail of clues that they left behind, and fortunately they have left quite a bit of clues, both in the form of actual footprints, broken branches, and torn pieces of clothe conveniently caught on a torn etc.

Unfortunately these clues doesn’t form an unbroken trail you can follow, and can only be found on some but not all of the screens. Disastrously there is also a lot of false clues like animal footprints, that you can easily end up following instead and which will lead you astray Like following fox or deer tracks instead of the right tracks

Luckily there is also a couple of tricks that you can use, that actually makes this a very easy maze to solve One which is pretty much right in your face and given to you by the game, and another that is more subtle and something that you have to discover for yourself.

1) You can pick up some berries and then use them to mark the different paths at each intersection. For example to mark the paths you have already tried and know are dead ends, which is how I used them.

2) [spoiler]The trail you are following does disappear from time to time, but the right track never disappears for more than one single screen! So if you haven’t found any clues for two consecutive screens, then you are on the wrong path and there is no need to go further. Just go back one screen and mark the path as a dead end.[/spoiler]

If you use those two tricks then it is actually a very easy maze, and most players should be able to solve it in about 10-15 minutes.

And of course if you really hate mazes, then there is also the option that you can just skip it - after a short while a big skip button will appear. Though I can’t imagine why anyone would want to actually do so


P.S. I’m (still) eagerly awaiting that Daedalic gets off their fat asses, and starts making the third game in the trilogy

P.P.S. I’m actually on time this week.

wilco - 17 February 2016 02:31 PM

There were actually tracks to follow?!? I never noticed.. it was trial and error (and berries) until the end.

He he, I guess this is a case of someone having played so many AG, that they think they know exactly how a certain puzzle type works, and because of it they don’t actually pay attention to the actual rules of the puzzle.

At the very start of the maze there are some very visible tracks, and the first thing Sadja says is:
Are those animal tracks? Or was it Rachwan?
If I follow the wrong trail, I might never find my way back.
So I thought it was pretty obvious that we had to follow a trail