Adventure Game World Records
 

Hi there,

I'm Dave Crookes, a writer for Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition and I was wondering if I could pick your collective brains?

I'm looking to see if anyone can steer me to the following:

The point n click game with the most puzzles.

The longest point n click game (most hours of gameplay before completion).

The biggest cast list in a point n click game

The most infamously obscure puzzle

And finally, the number of women in all of the Leisure Suit Larry games.

I'd have to have each verified but any help whatsoever pointing (and clicking) me in the right direction would be very much appreciated.

Incidentally, I was the chappie who broke the news about the new Broken Sword DS game in NRevolution magazine (www.nrev-mag.co.uk). I'm hoping to chat to Charles soon so I'll make sure I'll pop some fresh news on here, for sure.

Thanks for reading this and I do hope you can help me.

Dave

Welcome to AG Dave! :)

We have many gamers here who know a lot about many AG titles (the well known and obscure), so they may be able to shed some light (no guarantees though :P).

I think I'll extend your thread title a bit so no one misses it.

Would that include Peggy in LSL7?...

Codeguru

Al Lowe might be able to help you with the number of women in LSL question. He's very accessible through his website, http://www.allowe.com.

--Josh

Hmmm... infamously obscure puzzle... well, I'd imagine a lot of people would nominate Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned's cat hair mustache... it's by far not the worst of the obscure puzzles out there, but as for infamous? I'd say it's way up there.

I think a lot of people also point to the Longest Journey puzzle:

Spoiler:

rubber duck swim ring, bandaid, clamp puzzle to get the key from the subway

Infamous obscure puzzle, well how about "wear doggie" in Simon the Sorcerer II

How would one quantify and measure obscurity exactly? I'm not sure I understand how that is a guiness record.

And Playing time would be very subjective. How do you measure something that varies person to person, playthrough to playthrough?

And most puzzles is probably countable, but man I wouldn't want to be the guy to do it...

The longest point and click I've ever played is "The longest journey".

Well, if it has to be verifiable you will need some clear definitions.

What are puzzles? Opening a lock with a key? Having to talk to someone? Scaring the dog away?
Adventuregamers often call these things puzzles, but everyone else probably not.
In any case you're looking for a puzzlegame here, like maybe Pandora's Box. Or doesn't that count?

To quantify length: are difficult games longer than easy ones, counting the time being stuck? Counting the time used without any in-game activity (taking notes, solving abstract puzzles)?
Or just counting the time needed to complete a game when using a walkthrough with every step?
From my personal experience, Feeble Files was probably the longest one.

The cast: is that live actors only? Or every talking character? Every named character? Every living thing in the game?

And for the most obscure puzzle: that will be subjective anyway, so you may have to settle for the one that in mentioned most in forums like this one.
My nomination goes to the bag of runes in Black Dahlia.

Thanks so much for this help so far.

It is hard to quantify obscure but if there's one which crops up time and time again, then it's possible to include as a particularly quirky record.

Any records peoople know for the Monkey Island and Discworld games would be cool too - we're just looking for steers in the right direction to ensure we're not missing anything startling.

There isn't a site which charts the most hotspots in adventure games, is there?

I would say, in terms of longest, it would be counting the time needed to complete a game when using a walkthrough with every step and for cast either every talking character or every named character since we could set a record for "Adventure game with the most talking characters" - whether it's actual chat or text.

I totally agree: it's one of the most ridiculous puzzle I've ever encountered.

As much as I'm bleeding saying these, also the Cat-puzzle in GK3 :D

The puzzle from The Longest Journey is silly, but not too terrible. I really think GK3 wins on the infamy front. The puzzle in question has caused a stir.

from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Knight

hghffh

"Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned received mixed reviews with the general gaming press being less enthusiastic about the game's merits than dedicated adventure gaming publications. As with the other games in the series, though, most reviews of the game cited Jane Jensen's story as a subject for praise. The game received the dubious honor of being named "the last title of note in the adventure game genre" in an article on Old Man Murray in which the author uses a puzzle from the game to lambast the absurd puzzles of adventure games as a whole. It is the last adventure game to be published to date by Sierra Entertainment."

Old Man Murray link: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html

Old Man Murray leaves out a couple elements of the puzzle he describes, probably to make his argument seem more valid... such as

Spoiler:

drawing a mustache on the passport in the first place to obscure some of the details of Mosely's face because he and Gabe don't look alike

...but for the most part his comments are valid, and it is a damn silly, mostly illogical puzzle that stands out from its surroundings, especially given the history of the series (though the cuckoo clock usage in GK2 pushes things a little as well). Because GK3 is Sierra's last adventure title and that the cat-hair mustache puzzle is given so much flak (even going as far as saying that this puzzle is the pinnacle of bad logic that has caused the downfall of adventure games), it's infamous to the max. I don't hear much about The Longest Journey's puzzle, silly as it is, but I heard all the details of the GK3 puzzle from several places before I even played the first game.

The goat puzzle in Broken Sword :)

For sheer number of hotspots, I think I'd nominate my game Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. I'm not sure if the number of hotspots is something that could be easily figured out from the code, but I can ask the lead programmer if there's some way he can find it. It was a staggering amount, since I'm a nut for tailored responses from adventure games.

--Josh

the absolute worst that I can remember is in gabriel knight 1.

Spoiler:

DJ bring sekey madoule? HOW IN GODS NAME WOULD I BE ABLE TO THINK UP THAT EXACT PHRASE WITHOUT A WALKTHRU?! Did anybody honestly complete that puzzle just by guessing the correct phrase? I just can't believe they'd think someone could realize that.

Yeah ... I did. GK1 was before the days of walkthroughs and internet usage being common.

Spoiler:

Its really not that strange of a puzzle at all since the coffin is the only place you can place the tracker. The wording comes from looking at how the other two messages are worded and the name of the coffin is in the tape from the lecture (as well as said when you look at the coffin). And you should know that's the word you need to look up because of the use of "fwet kash" for the whip in a previous message.

Anyway I'd definitely go with the cat hair mustache puzzle as the most infamous. Its probably not the worst, but its certainly the most infamous. Its not even the fact that you use cat hair as a moustache that was so crazy to me, but that you're actually suppose to know to put tape on some random part of a fence that a cat goes by to be able to get some of its hair that you have no reason to know you're going to need ...

The baking puzzle in Still Life deserves an honorable mention though. That one also seemed entirely unsolvable without a walkthrough to me.

I tried to play Discworld I once and found all the puzzles therein obscure and ridiculous :frown:

I second this. Discworld Noir is extremely cool though, and much more funny in my opinion.

This one was easy. While it seems you have to compose your own message from many possibilities, that's just an illusion. The proper contents were pretty easy to guess.

Personally, I was hopelessly stuck in GK1 when I needed a travel agency. I had too much of a real world approach to guess where the game expects me to find it.

Only a small percent is obscure and the game is great. I got to the third act and found all of the quest items except the sword without any help of a walkthrough. The sword made me cheat ultimately. I'd never guess where I was supposed to find it, never.