Sometimes the developers of an adventure game don’t take into account the fact that players might do some very unexpected things: completely unforeseen actions that don’t fit in the puzzle dependency chart and that can lead to unintended situations, including an unwinnable game.
I’m not talking about technical glitches but about “logical bugs”: players achieving something without following the path expected by the developers.
Question to you: do you know any adventure game in which the player can follow a path that the developers didn’t plan?
Here is one: in “Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge” (at least in the original PC version) you have to win a spitting contest to get 6000 pieces of eight to charter a ship but in the game there is also a friendly pirate who will give you one piece of eight every time you polish his peg leg. And if you polish it thousands of times… here is the video:
What’s interesting is that this course of action doesn’t require the player to get a few items that are needed later in the game to escape a bad situation, making the game unwinnable.
Not unintended by developers but unexpected for players that it actually works:
In Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 3 - Lair of the Leviathan is an Easter egg which works similar to your example:
Your are inside a manatee and have to get out. Of course there is a proper puzzle, but another way is to pick up grubs and give them to DeCava.
After only 100,000 grubs you are finally free (yes, they implemented this “alternative” solution)!
I’ve tried it myself back then using some generic cheat software. AFAIR you cannot continue because of missing vital inventory items.
Look what @tasse-tee has found as solution to a Zak puzzle!! And that is before figuring out the official solution (not sure she even already has to date)
@David, Were you aware of this Quick Time Event approach?
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