• Log In | Sign Up

  • News
  • Reviews
  • Top Games
  • Search
  • New Releases
  • Daily Deals
  • Forums

Adventure Gamers - Forums

Welcome to Adventure Gamers. Please Sign In or Join Now to post.

You are here: HomeForum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread

Post Marker Legend:

  • New Topic New posts
  • Old Topic No new posts

Currently online

Support us, by purchasing through these affiliate links

   

[Archived] Time for a new community playthrough?

Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

Pegbiter - 08 January 2020 06:43 PM
rtrooney - 08 January 2020 06:33 PM

If you didn’t like MYST, you probably won’t like playing Lighthouse regardless of who leads it.

I’m not a big fan of Myst, so Lighthouse hasn’t seemed that interesting to me. The current top review on GOG does however make me think that the game might be worth a try after all:

[...] It is similar to Myst in its first person view, navigation system and some visual elements, but the similarity ends where the actual game starts. If a Myst is a nonsensical assembly of switches and buttons you must press and something happens somewhere (I never managed to finish it), Lighthouse is a proper point and click adventure, with dialogues, puzzles and great (for its time) SVGA graphics. [...]

FWIW I am not a big MYST fan either. But I certainly loved Lighthouse and both Shivers games. But the GOG review you cited is correct in one respect: In MYST you can solve a puzzle and a gate opens “somewhere” and your next quest is to find where that gate is. In the Sierra games, the connection between puzzles and objectives is more tightly woven.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

Avatar

Total Posts: 355

Joined 2017-03-09

PM

rtrooney - 08 January 2020 07:05 PM
Pegbiter - 08 January 2020 06:43 PM
rtrooney - 08 January 2020 06:33 PM

If you didn’t like MYST, you probably won’t like playing Lighthouse regardless of who leads it.

I’m not a big fan of Myst, so Lighthouse hasn’t seemed that interesting to me. The current top review on GOG does however make me think that the game might be worth a try after all:

[...] It is similar to Myst in its first person view, navigation system and some visual elements, but the similarity ends where the actual game starts. If a Myst is a nonsensical assembly of switches and buttons you must press and something happens somewhere (I never managed to finish it), Lighthouse is a proper point and click adventure, with dialogues, puzzles and great (for its time) SVGA graphics. [...]

FWIW I am not a big MYST fan either. But I certainly loved Lighthouse and both Shivers games. But the GOG review you cited is correct in one respect: In MYST you can solve a puzzle and a gate opens “somewhere” and your next quest is to find where that gate is. In the Sierra games, the connection between puzzles and objectives is more tightly woven.

My experience was the opposite. I was only a teenager when I tried Lighthouse, but I found the cues as to what I had to do very obscure, unlike my experience with Myst. Never finished it, and that was with the help of a friend who played it with me.

I think there’s always bias when it comes to judging difficult games, depending on how experienced the player was when the game was played. I’m fully aware my view of Lighthouse is tainted by being one of my first experiences with a more difficult kind of adventure game.

 

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 2060

Joined 2013-08-25

PM

rtrooney - 08 January 2020 06:33 PM

Not terribly different nor more complex than any number of games created at the time. Including the granddaddy of them all MYST in which you can almost literally take on any puzzle, in any area, in any order. Sierra admitted that Lighthouse, as well as the two Shivers games were MYST clones.

If you didn’t like MYST, you probably won’t like playing Lighthouse regardless of who leads it.

Sierra did advertise them as Myst clones, but I think the final results were something else. Shivers felt like a collection of puzzle games similar to The 7th Guest, only less linear and frustrating. Lighthouse was to me a predecessor to games by Kheops Studio such as Return to Mysterious Island, Voyage, The Secrets of Da Vinci (they even share similar themes). Of course, people also tend to call them “Myst clones”, but not me Smile There is a heavy focus on inventory combinations and mechanisms that need to be repaired, not figured out. At least that’s how I remember Lighthouse. I like Myst, but I prefere games with inventory.

     

PC means personal computer

Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

cyfoyjvx - 08 January 2020 08:35 PM

My experience was the opposite. I was only a teenager when I tried Lighthouse, but I found the cues as to what I had to do very obscure, unlike my experience with Myst. Never finished it, and that was with the help of a friend who played it with me.

I think there’s always bias when it comes to judging difficult games, depending on how experienced the player was when the game was played. I’m fully aware my view of Lighthouse is tainted by being one of my first experiences with a more difficult kind of adventure game.

Here is where you get to put your game-oriented math skills to use. When I first played Lighthouse I was 47 years old. At the time, Compuserve was the primary venue for all things gaming. AG and GameBoomers weren’t even a sparkle in the eye of the people who founded them years later. It was on that forum, Compuserve GAMERS, that I met Josh Mandel, with whom I struck a friendship that I hope lasts today. It’s where I met Olga Karkalas, who was the main author of the Lighthouse WT. And it’s where over years of emails and telephone calls, Josh and I not only tried to conceptualize a sequel to FPFP, but also tried to find a way to convince Bill Watterson that there was a game to be made from his Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip.

So what? He says. Well there are a few of us codgers around. And I think the relative difficulty of a game can only be judged by the difficulty of games you have played before. Lighthouse was not the most difficult game I ever played at the time I played it. So I find it difficult to believe it is too difficult for a CPT. But many feel otherwise.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

Avatar

Total Posts: 7432

Joined 2013-08-26

PM

rtrooney - 10 January 2020 07:16 PM

When I first played Lighthouse I was 47 years old. At the time, Compuserve was the primary venue for all things gaming. AG and GameBoomers weren’t even a sparkle in the eye of the people who founded them years later.

Lighthouse was released in 1996. To the best of my knowledge, both Gameboomers and AG were founded only one or two years later.

I’m one of the people who didn’t finish Lighthouse. In my case, there was a bug with the mine cart or something. But I found it a very difficult (and not all that interesting) game. I recently spent two hours watching someone on twitch play it. He only plays old and classic adventures, he’s very good at puzzles, but had a hard time with Lighthouse.

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

It’s not as if we’ve never played difficult games before.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

Avatar

Total Posts: 2060

Joined 2013-08-25

PM

With all due respect, by this time you could’ve written a nice guide for a Lighthouse CPU instead of complaining and defending the game, and we would’ve being playing it right now.

     

PC means personal computer

Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

Doom - 10 January 2020 09:52 PM

With all due respect, by this time you could’ve written a nice guide for a Lighthouse CPU instead of complaining and defending the game, and we would’ve being playing it right now.

You might be correct except for two things. One, I never said I wouldn’t discuss the merits of the game. And, two, from the very beginning I said I would not lead the game. So whatever time I’ve spent discussing the game is not material as to whether that time would have been better spent leading the game.

Lady K - I know it will probably be a very short lived thread, but is there any way the last two or so pages of Lighthouse-related posts can be bundled up and moved to a thread of their own? E.g. “Sierra’s Lighthouse: The Dark Being - A Discussion” That would get everything off the playthrough thread, and still leave an opportunity for anyone who wants to discuss the game to do so.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

Or any other administrator with those powers, e.g. Subbi or TimovieMan.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

Avatar

Total Posts: 5813

Joined 2012-03-24

PM

rtrooney - 11 January 2020 07:05 PM

Lady K - I know it will probably be a very short lived thread, but is there any way the last two or so pages of Lighthouse-related posts can be bundled up and moved to a thread of their own? E.g. “Sierra’s Lighthouse: The Dark Being - A Discussion” That would get everything off the playthrough thread, and still leave an opportunity for anyone who wants to discuss the game to do so.

Sorry Tim, why can’t you just do this yourself?

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

Because I am not an admin who has the power to delete posts from one thread and move them to another. Unless you are saying that I should Quote/Copy/Paste every message. Which would leave duplicate messages on two threads. Sorry. My intent was to move and entire block of posts to a new thread.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

Avatar

Total Posts: 3200

Joined 2007-01-04

PM

I vote for Thimbleweed Park, Mikekelly leader and Milkmaid of the Milky Way, Mikekelly leader. That game is short, but we could get the developer involved.

Heart

     

I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

Avatar

Total Posts: 421

Joined 2007-08-13

PM

I nominate Kentucky Route Zero.

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 7432

Joined 2013-08-26

PM

I vote for Kentucky Route Zero. Not just the last episode, all 5 of them. Smile

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

Avatar

Total Posts: 421

Joined 2007-08-13

PM

Karlok - 18 February 2020 09:20 AM

I vote for Kentucky Route Zero. Not just the last episode, all 5 of them. Smile

This was my intention too. It seems the full game is not too long for a community playthrough.

     

You are here: HomeForum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread

Welcome to the Adventure Gamers forums!

Back to the top