That means that the Italians can play it even sooner? 
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Well if you want to, of course! give me some time to check all the puzzles can be completed.
Edit: link sent to Guga in private.
Unless you play it in Italian, as a non-Italian speaker. Then those verbs are not spoiling anything at all.
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So it isnât really intuitive? How fast had she learned the coin interface and/or a one-click-interface?
I never claimed that the verb interface is not intuitive.
But thatâs not the order in which you play the game. If you enter a new room, the first thing you do is to watch and examine the scene and thus the objects available there. You will then spot an object that you would like to manipulate (for example to pick it up). Then you have to find the corresponding verb in the menu, click on that verb, then search the object in the scene again and click on that object. With the coin interface you can just click on the object and select the verb you would like to use. You donât have to take the focus (resp. your eyes) away from the object you would like to manipulate. With the verb interface you have to search the object twice (in the room).
Again: I donât say that the verb interface isnât intuitive, but the coin interface (done right) is more intuitive - especially for people who had never played an adventure game.
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but is the coin a way to interact or a way to solve puzzles? puzzles are non-obvious actions. the coin AFAIU allows you to do obvious things.
If you see it this way, then it is a way to interact with the environment - like the verb interface.
Well⌠for a 3yo that canât read, of course itâs not 100% intuitive. She just saw letters. I had to tell her that those were actual words that she had to read. I suppose she wouldnât have needed that hint if she had been 6yo.
She played also MI3, Sam&Max, Full Throttle and Kill Yourself. She was baffled by FTâs interface, as well as MI3. In FT she didnât seem to like the distinction between hand and foot. MI3âs coin had the problem that the âverbsâ didnât stand out, it all just looked like decoration. And both games had the problem of treating inventory items differently, especially in MI3, where combining needs a single click while performing an action needs a prolonged click.
Sam&Max just confused her, with those icons that also appeared in the inventory, and the fact that Max becomes a verb.
For Kill Yourself I had to explain what the wrench and the magnifying glass meant, I suppose thatâs a cultural fact.
So⌠Iâd say a coin is intuitive as long as the icons have a clear meaning and stand out well enough, and the verb interface is intuitive as long as the number of verbs is reduced and the person can read.
In terms of usability, maybe the coin is better, because as you said, you first see an object and then decide to interact. It works best for touch devices, for example. But we were talking about intuitiveness, not ease of use, and I still think that the verb interface is more intuitive than the coin, despite less usable, especially if the coin ends up merging more actions like âmouth for talking and blowingâ.
EDIT: I forgot, itâs also very important in my opinion that inventory items work exactly like room objects. Otherwise the player will have to learn two means of interacting, as it happens in MI3. You could have an off-screen inventory, it just doesnât need to be full screen, as it will then force you to learn the distinction between closing the inventory and bringing the selected inventory item onto the room to use it on something else. For this reason, the 9-verb interface is still my favorite, as it keeps the inventory there in plain sight as if those were room objects.
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You let a 3yo play that?
Thatâs because at that age, you can still stick both in your mouth?
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Made me look, too!
Sheâs the authorâs daughter, she HAS to 
I mean, Tom&Jerry cartoons are more violent than that game.
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And they frequently include (implied) suicide, too! 
SINCE YOU ASKED⌠
you may remember I leaned towards a UI which I called âscumm without useâ. Here, you only have âunaryâ verbs (like âpushâ, âopenâ, âenterâ, âclimbâ, âeatâ, âplayâ, âhide behindâ, âsearch inââŚ), but no âbinaryâ verbs (like âcut X with Yâ, âpaint X with Yâ, âgive X to Yâ, âpour X on YââŚ), because binary verbs would be too many, and also they are not needed, because, when you want to do a binary action, you can just combine the two objects. (e.g âsaw + plankâ, not âcut plank with sawâ)
(A variant of the above is to have a SCUMM with only âuse withâ but without âuseâ. So, it is impossible to compose âuse treeâ, because if you click this, you see âuse tree withâŚâ and you are forced to click a second object. So there is no overlap between âuseâ and other verbs, unlike in scumm.)
Well, I implemented both variants, and they work well. But in the end I did not choose them, preferring a UI with no verbs but only âuseâ or âuse withâ (context-sensitive). The reason is that verbs were made superfluous by the fact I had already chosen to have âclickable objectivesâ. I.e. you need to declare what you expect will happen after you use that object.
At this point, what I think is more interesting is to explain why I chose to have clickable objectives. But this is a longer story. Briefly, I think SCUMM canât properly implement the puzzles âuse saw with peg-leg to make-the-carpenter-leave-the-shopâ , or âsearch drawer to find-a-lighterâ, or âwind back the clock in order to cause-Jack-to-wake-up-too-earlyâ, or âpour coffee on Tom in order to have-tom-take-off-his-jacketâ.
I also analyzed all the puzzles that I find interesting, and found out they are much better expressed by combining an object with an objective, than by combining two objects. Some examples (from monkey2, Zak, Monkey1, DOTT, TWP):
use peg-leg in-order-to make-the-carpenter-leave-the-shop
use trumpet in-order-to win-the-spitting-contest
use wanted-poster in-order-to have-kate-arrested
use haystack in-order-to make-the-policeman-leave-the-prison
use dirty-car in-order-to make-it-rain
use electric-fence in-order-to recharge-battery
use bottle in-order-to get-a-nickel
use puddle in-order-to find-a-way-through-the-woods
âŚ
basically all puzzles (that I find interesting) consist in understanding that an object can be used to obtain some nonobvious result. But then itâs better to just click the object and the result itself. (and the presence of the clickable result is not a giveaway, because by assumption the object has apparently no relation to that result).
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@seguso I really like your deduction.
The explicit display of verbs and objects is my favorite interface for PnC adventures. They give the illusion of a sandbox game, where incredibly many things can be done. IMO TWP does not use its full potential of possible experimentation.
also, elsewhere I argued that a long list of verbs , each of which must only be used once in the game, is no different from a long list of objects, each of which must only be used once. We accept the latter, so why not the former? And the consequence of this reasoning is that even a UI with binary verbs would work well. Yes, you would end up with 25 verbs. So what? Especially because you would no longer need to specify the second object. (Instead of âuse saw with peg-legâ you would do âcut peglegâ. ) I also implemented this, and it works.
Then again, in apparent contradiction to all the above, in the end I opted for a UI with no verbs, because once you have objectives they are superfluous.
Yes but, as we know, Ronâs purpose was to replicate the old feeling. He said if he did another it would be completely different and innovative.
One small caveat on the puddle:
I found my way through the obvious way using the navigatorâs head, saw the funny sign and thought that was the pay-off. I enjoyed it, too. Then at some later point Doug stopped DIGGINâ and left his shovel, so I could get coins for the arcade. Only on my way out that second time did I notice one or two characters entering the woods; until then Iâd only seen banana guy coming out and stupidly didnât think much of it since I saw that guy all over the place anyway. So I was definitely in a state where it couldâve easily been a give-away given that Iâd already found my way through the woods.
right, but the problem you mention can be solved by rephrasing as:
use puddle in order to find the secret rendezvouz place in the woods.
But what Iâm saying is that thatâs a give-away, or in any case it removes what I thought was a very nice puzzle element: finding out thereâs a secret rendez-vous in the first place.
The pudding thing itself was quite straightforward. I mostly enjoyed the moment it clicked that there were people walking into the forest, i.e., the very thing you want to give away. 
I think we have to decide what the puzzle IS. Either the puzzle is to understand that there is a secret place in the woods, or it is to understand how to find the secret place, given that the place exists. But if neither is given, i.e. if both the âwhatâ and the âhowâ are obscure, thatâs a puzzle flaw (excessive obscurity.). And the objective UI solves this problem, imho.
A similar flaw is in âstick leaflet on wanted poster in order to have-kate-arrestedâ. In monkey 2, itâs not clear that your objective is to have kate arrested, or at any rate that you need to take her belongings; and thatâs imho a flaw, because, again, you have the situation where both the âwhatâ and the âhowâ are obscure. The objective ui solves this too.
It also promotes soundness from the designer, because very often the designer does not realize he is expecting the player to do things without reason. With the objective ui, this becomes impossible.
But it is given. Itâs analytically more accurate to call it two separate puzzles. At no point was I stuck nor was I ever doing things without reason. It wasnât obscure. But to me youâre talking about removing a clever and fresh feeling way of doing it and getting rid of it, leaving the fairly run of the mill second part of the puzzle behind.
Itâs been close to a decade since I played the special edition, but iirc your objective is to stay out of jail, or at least thatâs how I remember it. Are you sure there wasnât a hint in the conversation about her not wanting to sell something or other, or not for the right price? My wife was basically an adventure game first-timer when I played MI1, 2, and 3 with her and she had no trouble with it, often doing better than over-confident self-proclaimed seasoned âI finished these games on real DOS and Win 9x, not ScummVMâ yours truly.
ok⌠if they are two separate puzzles, then we can assume the first puzzle is already solved when the objective âfind the rendezvouzâ appears. So it is not a giveaway when it appears, because you already know thereâs a rendezvouz, having solved the first puzzle.
Apart from this, there are also other solutions to the problem. if you feel having âfind the rendezvouzâ as objective is a giveaway, donât take that as objective, but take a consequence of that. Why does the character want to find the rendezvouz? Whatâs the ultimate purpose? Use that as objective.
Really, in practice this does not cause problems.