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Editor's note: I love puzzle games, and I hate puzzle games -- they make me feel either like an Einstein or a clod. I wonder how difficult these escape-the-room games are? -Jason
Growing up, I never got much attention from girls. Since I was an insecure teen, I took pride in my intelligence. This usually only serves to alienate you further from women, but no one could've told me that in high school. When I did poorly on tests or in classes, I would feel terrible because being smart was the only shtick that I had.
I've come to my senses now after getting humbled people much more intelligent than me, but recently something drudged up all of those insecurities.
Escape-the-room games.
These particular games are point-and-click adventures set in a room that you must escape from. I played the series of rooms from Terminal House. I'd never played a point-and-click adventure game, so when I discovered these short scenarios, I thought that I'd give them a shot.
The rooms are beautifully simple and surreal; in one room you'll find a soda machine next to some kind of stasis chamber. These games live and die by the quality of their puzzles; this is also where my old insecurities reappear.
Oh, these puzzles make me so mad! After experiencing defeat in one room, I have to play another to prove that I'm smart, that I've still got it. After getting stumped, I resort to a guide and claim that there's no way anyone could've known to do some obscure action to complete the puzzle. I was able to complete one of the rooms on my own without consulting outside help; I might have been able to finish the others if I had spent more time with them (look at me justifying my ineptitude, as if you couldn't see right through it).
Designing a game like this must be very difficult: A puzzle that may be easy to some would stump others, and the next puzzle could reverse those roles. I felt like half of the puzzles worked while the other half left me upset by their ridiculous solutions.
The number puzzles worked most of the time, but I thought that the object puzzles were more hit-and-miss; learning the basic "feel" of the game alleviates some of the stress. Terminal House games have surreal, bizzare solutions to some of their puzzles.
Of course! Why didn't I think of that?
I also experienced "pixel hunting" firsthand: After thinking that the game wanted me to solve a puzzle using matrix math (hint: you don't use it to solve any puzzles in these games), I concluded that I must have missed something. So I began clicking wildly on every frame. Sure enough, I found the piece that helped me solve the puzzle.
I do wish that they could hide objects without resorting to pixel hunting.
Thankfully, you don't need to use linear algebra.
Even if these games are sometimes infuriating, I recommend that you try them in order to soak up all of their surreal Japanese quirkiness. My own insecurities aside, I still enjoy racking my brain to think of possible solutions to puzzles.
