I don’t know the context, but can’t you just separate “recap” and “help” as the main two branches of the dialogue tree? When the second option is selected, the character can warn the player that they are entering the spoiler zone.
There’s also the urge of people to exhaust every dialogue option available in case there’s a vital clue or trigger somewhere in there. Unless you already have other situations where players may chose one line or the other, but not both, it seems stylistically questionable to mix game and meta-game information in dialogue.
That said, maybe the character can hand an item to the player, that when used triggers the hint system. A bit like the phone in TWP where you were able to call for help. (Not quite sure if that’s how it worked, as I never played the version that added this feature).
Sounds perfect. But maybe mark the dialog lines in a different color
I now realized that the supporting character isn’t available in the first and third act, so even if I have him as a hint system for most of the game, players are on their own at the beginning and the end.
So I’ll probably resort to something else, like a phone.
I had this idea where you had a phone as both an options screen and an in-game object. Like, the maps icon is for fast travel, the archive icon is to save, the gears icon is for options, the camera button is for a screenshot, and the contacts button is to contact characters you might need and then you could have a contact that’s just the hint line.
But now I’m really going off topic.
Another option would be to record the time needed to solve the puzzles. If there isn’t any progress for a while, the protagonist could react with additional hints during the “look at” action (or the existing characters could give more hints during talks).
The only question would be: What is a “while”? 
Telltale games had a hint system where the characters spoke hints out loud when the player wasn’t making progress. You could even adjust hint frequency from the menu! It was alright, but didn’t really work.
- The voice lines were out of context, and (especially in Sam and Max) could be mistaken for casual character banter instead of a hint.
- The hints weren’t that helpful. They could get a very lost player back on track, but didn’t help if you were really stumped on a puzzle and in “try everything on everything” mode.
- Because the hints were on a timer, you wouldn’t necessarily get the hints right when you needed them. This took the hints out of context further.
I do appreciate the attempt. I believe Telltale were in the first or second wave of adventure games for adults trying to include in-game hint systems, and they tried to be more subtle than a big hint button. I think that’s worth something.
Of course, Telltale games had a second hint system. They just published strategy guides for their games on their official website lol.
Postscript/Aside: I think i’m right in thinking adventure games for children used hint systems before adventure games for adults, so that’s why I’m making a distinction. I could be wrong. Don’t trust me.
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I actually liked the hint system in Sam and Max, I always set it to the lowest frequency and then the occasional “I think we should go back to…” or something more cryptic felt both natural and helpful whenever I got really stuck and was in the wrong area.
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I know that situation. But, now that I think of it, I can’t recall one single time I could manage to solve a puzzle that way. Can you?
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Not in a point and click, no. But I did solve some of Phoenix Wright that way, iirc.
This is because I would go to a guide before relying on brute forcing. When I was playing PW, I was too dense to think of using a guide, I think. Or the game was too new to have guides out. I played some of those titles very early into their English releases. Point is: I wonder if older adventure fans resorted to brute forcing more often?
All the time.
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Yes, this is how I solved “Use Saw on Peg Leg” in MI2.
It took longer than usual because I had already dismissed the peg leg for puzzle solving, as I figured its sole function was to be polished for money.
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I find the biggest obstacle to puzzle solving is probably when you solved it but not exactly the right way and therefore dismissed it as wrong. It’s a more evil subcategory of when you know you’ve solved it but you can’t quite figure out how to let the game know you solved it.
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You haven’t asked me. 
But I solved a lot of the puzzles in “Broken Age” that way.
Regarding the LucasArts/Lucasfilm Games: We (me and my schoolmates) got most of the games after the solution was published in magazines. So we just used the solution if we got stuck.
The other games were teamwork: We discussed the puzzles on the schoolyard. And this is something that I really miss today.
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Not exactly. I think the majority of times I get stuck is because I overlooked a hotspot or item, and in that case trying everything on everything does not really help. It’s still the first thing I’ll try even though I should know better …
Oh yes!
Not very successful at it, though. Maniac Mansion comes to mind, where you could just have the wrong character or not have the correct object yet. So simply trying everything with everything isn’t a sure fire method.
Overall, I don’t think I have successfully brute forced more than 5 puzzles over all games I ever played. While I probably tried on a hundredfold.
Examples of succes: The monkey wrench in MI2 and more recently some in @Guga’s games (sorry…)
Examples of failure: trying to break the mendbending machine in Zak. Or trying to combine every two objects in the inventory whenever I got really stuck and ran out of ideas (in every game).
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We still do here today!
Simply start a new topic for every puzzle you’re stuck on in the hints category. Of course someone else might just drop the solution and spoil it, but given the small and polite group of people we have here, I am sure we can agree to first let those who are also stuck there exchange some ideas (“at first I thought it was a …. So I tried to … But that didn’t work. I wonder if we need to get … first? Or find a way to …?”) and then those who solved the puzzle already could read along, refrain from commenting and join in after a couple of days with a friendly “do you need a small hint?” Bonus points for tailoring the hints to be cryptic, non-spoilery, incremental, hooking in to the discussion and what those who are stuck already correctly deduced. And obviously blurring the text so people can still choose to not reveal too much at once. (Something which was hard with solutions in magazines… you’d have to ask a parent or sibling who wouldn’t play the game to look if there is anything in there that could help with X to avoid you’d see all the solutions to other puzzles you hadn’t even found)
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- I want to know which ones now
- Thanks to @seguso’s insistence, my new game will be way less bruteforceable.
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An example from Guga 's games?
How many of those " brute forcings" result from not trusting the designer? If you had been sure the solution was fair and logical and you had sufficient clues, would you have still brute forced it?
I don’t think that this this will work (the exchange of ideas): There will be several people who have already solved that puzzle and at least one of them will give hints. (Just have a look at the threads in the “Hints” category.)
And we have the problem that we’ll play the game at different speed. For example due to my vacation I will start the game two weeks after the release for the fist time - and thus after you guys finished the whole game. (Back then we played together after the school, now and then sitting together in front of one TV / monitor.)
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None! I blame it entirely on my own lack of seeing what the solution is to the puzzle (or what I think the puzzle is).
Examples from “Where Wolf?”
- getting out of the jail, I tried using every object I could pick up with the candle… and the toilet… and with each other… because I could not go anywhere else or see anything else. (The being trapped in a snake from Curse of MI comes to mind as a similar limited situation)
- the maze… it was only after I used the nose icon on everything that the solution clicked. I never would have thought of it thinking forward from the soup bowl.
- building some type of ammo to use with the slingshot. I tried to fling the hair first. Then tried to use all the other objects. Also tried to throw all of them in the soup (perhaps the bowl landing in the soup pot would create a big enough splash?). It is only after the game lets you do this that you realise how this helps you to get soup on the nun. But to get there, you need to just randomly try things, like using your hair with an empty soup bowl to create a sticky hairy ball. Which makes no sense- even if you know you eventually want the big nun to take off her clothes… (wow, that’s a line to be misunderstood out of context).
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