another cutscene done…
6 more remaining.
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“You have the strength to push that wall, but not to chop the wood?”
“That was all drywall! That cheapskate Dracula saved money on that as well!”
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Well, these are some free thoughts on the matter:
compared to the classics, more than the hint system itself (which deserves great attention though) my experience was made better in TWP because of those little damn notebooks.
Even if I consider a good thing the possibility to “remember” a dialogue in your game, it is more focused to have a written list of the goals.
Think of the potential of it in your story: what is an added value of having the princess as your companion in exploration?
She can write! She can write down the goals in a short and clear list, while Olivia can’t!
That would be such a nice encouragement to the usefulness of noting, and for the younger players, to writing at all.
PS. I know you could now answer me as Thamos would to Thoth. Again: don’t take him too seriously.
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Well, I do have the goals in clear view…
Exactly. From that position, you could implement some sort of hint system, when the player does the incorrect association, instead of bringing him to the insult dialogue page 
Oh, yes, that was planned. But with the new UI you don’t click the objective, so that possibility is gone…
OTOH I could still turn Camilla into a hint system, like Sophia in fate of atlantis. but she’s not very clever…
but she could say “I think that for this goal we should reread my diary for clues”, or “I think that for this goal we should’t read the diary but be observant” or “do something in this area”…
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That’s the second nicest secret passage I’ve ever seen!
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Hey, what happened to the fairy? 
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I haven’t given much thought to the hint system. The fairy is still an option. I guess I need to start from the kind of hints that I need to give…
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Does even the fairy can insult Olivia?
that is to be decided 
I’d like something as I had seen in Woodruff And the Schnibble of Azimuth :
Funny
but that’s not a hint system
I was thinking about this thing: three levels of difficulty.
Easy. When you make an incorrect association, the system brings you to the hint dialogue page, where Camilla (or the fairy) helps you, thanks to the notes she wrote down.
Standard. When you make an incorrect association, nothing happens. Tough and fair.
Hard. When you make an incorrect association, the system brings you to the insult dialogue page, where Olivia insults you (just like now).
It would work also as a sort of option set up disguised (or included) in the difficulty level choice.
The Easy difficulty could also help users to get past the learning curve of a different from usual user interface (textual or graphical).
… and make it “hard” by default.
With a puzzle to solve of you want to switch to easy or normal.
Without hints.
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I think it’d be nice to be able to switch around at will though, to get around that one annoying puzzle.
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I can see a place for an “easy” level, where there are less subtle, more explicit clues. But only a few puzzles allow this. Sometimes I was in doubt whether to let someone say something, or whether to say something in one way or another. that would be the difference between easy and hard.
Another thing that could happen at the easy level is that olivia (or someone else), as you walk and change rooms, after a while tells you “for this goal, something tells me I have to remember something that was said in the past (by X)”, or “for this goal, the past won’t help me, I need to walk around and observe”. (this would have been the first hint in the incremental hint system, anyway)
Apart from this, I don’t see the need for further differences between easy and hard. You are free to use the hint system in both modes. The hint system will ask you what goal you seek hints for. And it will give incremental hints for that goal. First pointing you to the exact dialog that you have to read again. And then if you keep asking it will repeat the facts that were already stated in that dialog in a different way. Then it will start asking you to derive implications from these facts (in those cases where the implications are not already the solution, but only intermediate steps). And no more… I don’t think I want to tell you the solution. no more than 100 people will play this game anyway
And you can only ask for a hint once every N minutes …
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Well if you are able to interest a sporadic, lazy, habitual and prickly player like me… Who knows? 