For some reason, I thought the glowing book on top of the ladder was a window and didn’t realize to pick it up… So that delayed me a lot. It seemed logical that there would be a window up there…
Also, I was expecting a tool to find the book, as that was implied on dev blog.
Then again, I suggested the tall library myself, so… https://twitter.com/artovartiainen/status/626110018622849025
I will take a different approach. I played the game with my 9 yr old daughter. I was doing most of the work, but she would occasionally jump in and be really into it. Was awesome. And there were puzzles that stumped me that were obvious to her, which says something about logic used by kids vs adults i think. In particular, zapping the hotel room door to get the tools. The game and my kid made me feel stupid.
That’s very interesting. 
It seems that the door puzzle was one of the hardest ones, for several people. Why in your opinion it was so straightforward to your daughter? Which connections did she make that you didn’t?
(BTW, welcome to the forums!)
Same problem I had. I did not pickup the trophy (because I try never to pickup things without reason, to see if the game allows to behave logically :)). But then, when I had a reason, I forgot that there was something to pickup in that room!
Don’t tell me. I was watching my daughter play Freddi Fish 4 and she solved the final puzzle before I did. And she’s three years old. Kids have mental connections that we can only dream of!
Similar story. The todo lists help, but if you can only squeeze in a couple of hours every now and then, usually after a long day staring at monitors and code at work, you’re bound to miss stuff.
Same here. How did we do this back in the 80s and 90s? Especially in such “big” adventures like Zak…
Zapping the door. If there was a door lock hotspot I’d have tried. But why would I zap wooden door?
For me, the trampoline. My theory was: that joke book somehow ended up on the roof of one of the wagons, and I need the trampoline to get up there to look around. I tried all sorts of stuff to get Ransome to land off-center and be flung at an angle. What I didn’t consider was that the tramploine was not needed yet.
The puddle also didn’t seem to make sense to me, although I had already read the spoiler by accident. Only when I saw the effect of pouring the waste into the puddle did that one click for me.
Also: the way I figured to catch the radioactive waste in the trophy was because it was the only vaguely container-shaped object in my inventories. I didn’t know the word “pewter” except in the context of “metal that’s used for little figurines”. I just looked it up, turns out to be mostly tin with some other elements, and sometimes a bit of lead. I’m guessing the lead variant was more prevalent back in the 80’s, but I still don’t see how something that’s at least 85% tin (and therefore at most 15% lead) would be such a good container for radioactive waste. Especially since it’s an open container.
No idea. Seems like we had a lot more time and energy back then though.
Some random answers to previous posts:
Hahah, reminds me of the great hint in Discworld: “Come again later. Or earlier.”
Same here. Tried to enter the bank at the beginning and it was closed. I was waiting for an act to finish, and the time changing from the evening to the next day. I never received any hint that would indicate that the bank would be open by now. It seemed logical to try the bank again anyway at the point in the game when I needed it, but only in a “it doesn’t make sense, but let’s try anyway” kind of way.
That didn’t pose much of a problem, but I had to look up the values for nickel and dime since I’m not American, and therefore do not know all their quaint little words for arbitrary amounts of money.
Franklin can manipulate electricity. He zaps the phone, opening the line. Then he zaps the buttons to dial a number. At no point in time does he pick up the phone though; the phone remains firmly on the hook.
I didn’t find this all that illogical after seeing him manipulate the elevator panel to go wherever he wants. He doesn’t physically press any buttons there either.
There is no strong hint, nothing that explicitly tells the player that the bank is open. The only thing that can be considered a motivation to visit the bank (again) is that the lawyer tells you that he wants to see Chuck’s actual cancelled check and not just the check stub.
My real puzzle was discovering where the secret meeting was taking place. Even the recent hint line gives you a questionable reason, something like “find a place that you haven’t visited”.
Well, you get the flyer from Chet the Pizza guy. Maybe I was just lucky because out of the Random people that walked over the puddle of water Chet was usually one of them, so assumed it was wherever they would lead me.
That wasn’t my problem: as soon as I saw someone stepping in the puddle and walking away, I understood that the place was in the woods.
My issue was that I didn’t see anyone walking in that location the first time that I went there (when I wanted to find the treasure, for example). So I had no motivations to return to the trailhead.
Ah, but that´s a similar issue. Chet had been specific enough but if you walk there and it just didn´t happen with anyone you wouldn´t think they might give you directions to anything. But I think you´d find that out eventually as you tend to revisit places when you´re stuck (at least you should, I think).
Really? I must have missed it. I remember him purposely talking vaguely, winking and leaving the pizza flyer but I don’t remember him being specific about the place where the secret meeting takes place.
No I mean the fact that he himself walks there would have been a very specific hint, had it happened for you.
This actually backfired for me. The first time I saw someone walking into the forest, it was Chet, so I assumed that he was going to stay in the forest and was never going to appear in town. So, I never tried looking for him in town (or anywhere else) after that.
Of course, the other part to my flawed logic was that at that point in the game, after having unlocked the rest of the county, I thought I was done with the main part of town. So when I got stuck with the secret meeting, I just never thought about returning to the town to see if there was anything that was new.
How do you get a dial tone from a phone (and the microphone and speaker to work) without unhooking the phone? Modern ones with hands-free technology, yes. But this one does not have the handsfree button.
I dunno… the same way that you get to control a ghost, or how the secret of AI is vacuum tubes…
If Franklin is able to use the buttons in the elevator (and he is), then he’s already using his electricity to complete otherwise open circuits. If he does the same thing to the plunger (basically a button) that detects the presence of the handset, then the handset would work without having to be picked up.
Exactly, the plunger is connected to a microswitch that closes a circuit. Just like the buttons in the elevator close a circuit when you press them.
Come on guys, you know this too, right? Don’t make me feel like the weird one because I used to be the kid that would take everything apart to see how it worked when I was 10 or so. 
