Joystiq

Return to Quest Quiz: Tim Schafer

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-03-07T20:30:00+00:00

Alright, Tim Schafer, you win. After targeting various industry folks with a typically contrived adventure game puzzle and then assembling their responses in our GDC Quest Quiz feature, we simply weren't prepared for your relentless response to our silly challenge. Not only did you trick us into doing all the hard work, but you successfully navigated through our made-up-as-we-went-along chicane of bizarre logic. But don't grow complacent in your victory -- we'll get you next time.

The Player
Double Fine's Tim Schafer, designer of Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts and upcoming god of gwar epic, Brütal Legend. Prior to the release of those games, he worked on The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2 and Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

Make your way past the break to read our adventurous e-mail exchange.

The Solution
Joystiq: Essentially, I asked several adventure game connoisseurs to solve a really obnoxious puzzle and generally just give us a glimpse into their thought processes (if any). If you have a few moments to spare, I'd love to get a potential solution from you.

Tim: North

Joystiq: .......

Tim: >GO NORTH

What happened? Did the game crash already?

[At this point, we realize Tim is actually playing our imaginary adventure, text-adventure style.]

Joystiq: It asked me to insert the second disk -- I don't know how to deal with this.

Tim: I can't go north?

Joystiq: Okay, I've inserted the second disk and you've gone north. Not sure how helpful that was, as you just took a step closer to the ferocious robot bear.

>examine bear

You peer into the glowing red eyes of the mechanical bear, curious about the purpose such a dangerous contraption could possibly serve. You briefly wonder if there are any robot trout nearby.

>W

You see a rusted mailbox marked "T. Girtlebee." Behind it lies a quaint cottage surrounded by (seemingly non-hostile) garden gnomes. Several puffs of smoke escape the home's crooked chimney. You smell bacon.

>open mail box

The mailbox contains ... mail. You don't know why you were expecting anything different.

>examine mail

"You may already have won* ONE MILLION DOLLARS!"

*an opportunity to be eligible to win a chance at winning the possibility of winning.

>examine sealed manila envelope

You open the envelope and reach deep inside. Like, really deep. It seems the interior of the envelope, err, envelops a magical and infinite amount of space. You could pull anything out of this thing, you reckon.

>enter envelope

You tumble head first into the envelope, frantically grabbing the air in an embarrassing attempt to stop your weightless, ceaseless spinning. Your hand finally grasps onto something ... something that smells of liquorice.

>take liquorice

You give the liquorice a good tug, but it refuses to budge.

>examine liquorice

The strand of liquorice is quite thick, barely allowing your hands to meet on the other side when you wrap your arms around it. You figure that hugging a giant piece of liquorice is pretty reflective of your feelings toward the candy, but also wonder where exactly the delicious rope leads.

>climb liquorice

The weightless environment and its complete ignorance of your pitiful upper body strength greatly eases your ascent up the liquorice rope. Your climbing ceases when you reach a metallic, circular door.

>score

Score: Burnt Sienna / 330

>open door

You push on the door and suddenly find yourself sliding out of a bank vault. Alarms are blaring and security guards have their guns aimed at all of your crucial organs.

>save

[Here, we were in an airplane and unable to promptly respond to Tim's entry.]

Man, this game takes forever to save.

Game saved. Finally.

>use macaroni statue with guards

You hurl the macaroni statue at a guard's head, watching as it bounces off and shatters into pieces on the vault's cold floor. Initially, the guards were just angry. Now you've made them angry AND confused.

>open parasol

As you reach for the parasol's conspicuous handle, the guards panic and rush you. Within seconds the entire group is unconscious, quite literally slipped up by bits of hard macaroni gliding across the marble floor. Though you've made it pasta this obstacle, you'd best consider an escape route if you don't want to wind up in a penne-tentiary.

>L

You glimpse a doppelgänger, playfully mimicking your every move! No ... no wait. There's just an awfully shiny marble wall on this side.

>examine safety deposit boxes

You run your hand across the icy surface of a metallic safety deposit box, remarking at the carelessness required to leave the key jutting out of it.

>open safety deposit box

You open the safety deposit box and suddenly feel.... a bit less safe. As you peer inside, you see a miniature version of the bank you currently stand in, complete with tiny little guards sprawled out on the floor. An inescapable aura of self-awareness envelops you as your eyes become transfixed to the back of your own head -- currently staring into a safety deposit box, it seems.

>get tiny guards

You scoop up the tiny guards in one motion and deposit them safely into your pocket.

>get tiny me

Are you sure you want to do that? You may want to save first.

>give rubber chicken to tiny me

You clumsily try to hand over the rubber chicken, but only end up crushing your tiny self beneath a mountain of artificial poultry. Whoops.

>get tiny dead me

The sight of your lifeless body dangling from your fingertips proves to be quite disturbing as you pick the tiny corpse up and drop it in your increasingly crowded pocket.

>enter vault door

You take a step through the vault door and once again go tumbling past the strand of liquorice, into a realm of weightlessness and nonsense.

>use rubber chicken with liquorice

The rubber chicken's pulley snaps right onto the liquorice rope, with the resulting click acting as the strange device's triumphant declaration: "This is my purpose!" You glide along the rope for several minutes before landing on soft, squishy ground. You hear something humming nearby.

>L

You see an office cubicle containing a swivel chair and a lone computer on a desk.

>use computer

The computer awakens. Displayed on the monitor is a single line of text, patiently awaiting an answer. "TELEPORT DESTINATION>...."

>save

Game saved!

>type cave

You dramatically strike the ENTER key... and nothing happens. A puff of smoke emerges from the computer, a clear signal that something's gone wrong. Maybe you can fix it?

>i

Inventory:

- Parasol (perforated)
- Rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
- Handful of unconscious, miniature security guards
- Your own tiny, dead body

>fix computer with guards

After giving the handful of guards a good shake (a hand ... shake) to wake them up, you place them near the back of the computer. Completely intimidated by your enormous size, they raise no objection as you usher them into the casing. "Fix it!" you bellow. Quite miraculously, they do -- but only after several are run over by a bus.

>type cave

In your hopes of entering the cave, you enter "cave" (and then cave in the "enter" key). There's no bright flash. No smoke. Not even a "Poof!" You're once again standing in front of the only cave you'd ever recognize -- the one guarded by a robot bear.

>feed tiny dead me to robot bear

With two metallic chomps, the bear devours your diminutive doppelgänger. You can't quite be certain due to its lack of facial tissue and emotion, but you think it enjoyed the me-al. The result of your action is this: Having matched the complete genetic configuration of tiny dead you with large alive you scanned earlier, the bear now considers every instance of you deceased and consequently non-threatening. You have essentially been rendered invisible to the bear's scanners.

>enter cave

You enter the cave and are quite likely to be eaten by a grue.

OMG YOU WIN!
FINAL SCORE: Atomic Tangerine / 42995

Wooo! Take that, GAME.

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GDC Quest Quiz V: Ragnar Tørnquist

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-02-26T21:55:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Adventure, GDC

We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.

The Player
Ragnar Tørnquist, designer of The Longest Journey and writer and director of Dreamfall, Anarchy Online and upcoming MMO, The Secret World.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

Check out Ragnar's thoroughly realized reasoning after the break.

The Solution
Ragnar: Well, obviously, robot bears like macaroni. That's something everybody knows, so luckily, there's that to begin with. Knowing that, however, I'm guessing the robot bear has a very short sort of scanning range so, in order to get close enough to taunt it with the Tim Schafer statue (it's gonna maul you!), you have to find a way to draw its attention. Do I have to use all the inventory items?

Joystiq: Some people throw them away.

Okay, so what I do is I take the manila envelope and make a paper airplane out of it and stand a good way away from the robot bear. I use the paper airplane on the bear and get its attention, and now I have to use the parasol, of course, to lure it closer because the thing starts scanning but it's not getting any closer. I start doing that and the robot bear starts to move towards me. I place down the Tim Schafer macaroni statue, taunting it ... What's the fourth item I have?

A rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.

Okay, right. So, using the parasol, the bear is coming towards me. I ... I'm getting stuck.

You can't load an earlier saved game.

[laughs] Alright, the robot approaches the statue of Tim Schafer, and as everybody knows he's so charismatic, even in macaroni form, that the robot is going to spend quite a bit of time with the statue before it notices me again. At that point, I tie the rubber chicken around the robot's head, confusing it massively and making my way into the cave!

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GDC Quest Quiz IV: Erik Wolpaw

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-02-26T17:55:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Adventure, GDC

We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.

The Player
Erik Wolpaw, co-author of the now-defunct Old Man Murray. He's written for games such as Psychonauts and Portal, and once accused the adventure genre of committing suicide.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

The Solution
"How is the pulley attached to the rubber chicken? See, this is why I hate adventure games. I think you're expecting a joke answer, and I'm actually trying to figure it out. OK, type 'quit.' That's what I would do. Go to the menu and type 'quit.'"

(Catch the rest of our interview with Wolpaw later this week!)

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GDC Quest Quiz III: Mike Stemmle

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-02-26T15:25:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Adventure, GDC

We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.

The Player
Recent Telltale Games addition Mike Stemmle, co-designer of Sam & Max Hit the Road and Escape from Monkey Island, and designer on the ill-fated Sam & Max Freelance Police. He also worked on Afterlife, but he doesn't think you remember it.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

Peek hard at Mike Stemmle's Star Trek strategy after the break.

The Solution
Mike: The rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle is only useful for one thing so that's right out. That's just a red herring. The manila envelope ... I think you can use the perforated umbrella to open the manila envelope which will contain (probably) some pen and paper with which you can write down a logical conundrum -- and now I'm going back to the Star Trek stuff that I've been doing for the last two years -- which you can expose to the robot bear. His head will blow up when exposed to something like, "This sentence is false" or "I am lying."

Joystiq: Puzzle solved! And you get whatever happens to be in the cave. We haven't really thought about it yet.

Caves, you know ... I get very bored with caves. They're always an excuse to just do these extended cave interiors with pieces plunked together like that. Caves are out, man, it's all outdoors these days. That's where it's at.

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GDC Quest Quiz II: Steve Purcell

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-02-25T17:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Adventure, GDC

We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.

The Player
Steve Purcell, illustrator and writer best known as the creator of Sam & Max. We're surprised he even talked to us after last year's drunken debacle.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

Find Steve Purcell's solution to the "meta-puzzle" after the break.

The Solution

Steve: I'd probably just eat the Tim Schafer macaroni and uh ...

Joystiq: What did that accomplish exactly? You were hungry?

Well, the only thing that could be more delicious than macaroni is macaroni shaped like Tim. So, after that, I would probably turn the computer off and go outside.

So, you solved the puzzle by solving the larger meta-puzzle around it.

Did you say "meta-puzzle?" Did you say "meta-puzzle" out loud and mean it?

Yes, yes I did.

Shame on you!

Burned.

Here's a guy that says "meta-puzzle" in conversation with conviction.

So, puzzle solved!

For me it is!

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GDC Quest Quiz I: Ron Gilbert

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-02-25T15:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Adventure, GDC

We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.

The Player
Ron Gilbert, designer of The Secret of Monkey Island (amongst other LucasArts adventures), consultant on Penny Arcade Adventures and designer of Hothead's upcoming episodic series, Deathspank.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

Find Ron Gilbert's surprisingly direct solution after the break.

The Solution
Ron: This is a really stupid adventure game puzzle.

Joystiq: It's pretty traditional, actually.

Well, I'd probably try to feed the bear the macaroni Tim Schafer. That would probably be the first thing I'd try.

But it's a robot bear. Why would it need to eat macaroni?

You got me on that one. Okay ... is there anything above the cave?

It's whatever you imagine it to be. It's a pretty non-specific adventure game.

What's in the envelope? Can I open the envelope?

You can open the envelope.

Okay, I'm gonna open the envelope.

Alright, it's open.

What's inside of it?

Whatever you want.

Well, I thought you were giving me this thing.

I just gave you a sealed envelope, I don't know what's in it.

Then it's the "Off" instructions for the robot bear. I just say them and the robot bear shuts down and I go into the cave.

What about the other items? Why do you have them?

They're just red herrings to kind of screw up the player.

And you succeeded! That was too easy. Don't you think this puzzle needs a higher difficulty level?

Maybe, I was on easy mode.

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