James Paige
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grue_%28monster%29
Grues: they are pretty famous!
There is no obvious keyhole in the exit door. However, it slides open as you approach it. Modern technology: is there anything it can't do?
Congratulations! You have escaped the labyrinth!
Thanks to everyone who participated! Special props to ncw64 for his incredible puzzle-solving acumen.
All About the Labyrinth
The labyrinth was inspired partially from my collective experience with interactive fiction (see: Zork, et al.), but mostly from a very similar game run by astute dungeoneer Guild, who joined the fun here after I told him he was responsible for all this. My creative process in designing the labyrinth went something like this:
- Make a room
- Add some puzzly elements
- Brainstorm what to do with those puzzly elements
- Repeat
The rooms and overall solution were completely finished shortly after I started the game (although I was briefly worried that someone would out-explore me, you guys explored depth-first). Many of the dungeon's particulars were invented on the fly, particularly item descriptions. I especially waffled on what to do with the magic keys, which were originally intended to be red herrings (hence the fishy shape). I should've stuck with that; having the control room door unlocked from the start would've been funnier.
In fact, much of the game's content was either window dressing or red herrings; notably, the starting inventory items were probably entirely useless. I was hoping that someone would come up with a creative use for one of their items, but in hindsight I really made the items a bit
too useless. Oh well! I still had fun with them, though I probably wouldn't do it again.
The sphinx room made it into the game early on, and at that point I hadn't decided what purpose it would serve. Making it a hint room was probably the best thing I could've done for the game, since it meant I had more control of the game's flow: if the game was stalling, as was the case with the troll, I could give it a shove, but when new ground was still freshly uncovered (the party room and beyond), I could just nudge the game in the right direction. Plus, writing for Oedipus and the sphinx was a lot of fun, and it gave me liberty to make fun of the players with sardonic Ed as the mouthpiece. (See also: the reaper's death messages.) I would definitely include something like this in another game.
The game's cornerstone puzzle was the secret dance. There were two possible solutions to this puzzle: either put four players in the party room or enlist the aid of one of the giant spiders. Regardless, this was a puzzle that would require some collaboration. The monitor's "Enter dance" line strongly hinted that the solution was in the party room, and the Simon puzzle having the same colored lights that appeared in that room was another strong hint. Failing at that, brute-forcing the microphone connection worked too. I'm pretty proud of this puzzle -- hinted at from very early on, spanning multiple rooms of the labyrinth, and multiple methods to arrive at the solution.
Things that went well: The pacing of the game was really smooth for the most part and once everyone started exploring the entire labyrinth, the puzzles were solved at an excellent pace - not so quickly as to trivialize the experience, but not so slowly as to bog things down, either. A few times I felt that a little experience with the genre would really have greased the wheels ("try everything in your inventory" is Adventure Game 101 material, but somehow everyone tried everything
but the ticket against the troll), but things resolved themselves in the end.
Things that could've gone better: There was an inordinate amount of confusion regarding cardinal directions. I... don't really know what to do about this. I also felt like the puzzle solutions were sort of bottlenecked, discouraging creativity. This could have been handled by having more puzzles with flexible solutions (the water puzzle or the torch being the best examples) rather than the abundant single-solution puzzles (notably, the troll). Lighting the dark room also took way, way longer than I thought it would.
Many thanks for playing! I'll run another game someday, but perhaps someone else will step up in the meantime.