History Main / TrialandErrorGameplay

** Let's not forget just trying to simply open the front door of the house. One of the books you can find contains something that could remotely be considered a clue to this, but it's obscure enough that I don't believe a single player has ever been stopped from trying to open the door in good faith (rather than to see the death) on their first playthrough.

[[quoteright:300:[[IWannaBeTheGuy http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/morespikes.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:300:[-It's possible to get out of this situation alive. Good luck figuring it out on the first try.-] ]]

-->-- The ''IWannaBeTheGuy'' FAQ, regarding the room in the page image

** To explain the page image from ''IWannaBeTheGuy'' - First you have to shoot a spike off the wall so it sticks into the ground to create a platform, then you have to jump on a series of platforms that appear and disappear every second. To make it worse, if you stay on the first platform and [[GenreSavvy watch where the blocks appear]], they will follow a different pattern when you actually jump on them.

** Maybe for Silent Assassin ratings, but it's perfectly possible (and save for the last few levels of each game) easy to complete the missions on your first go.

* ''{{Donkey Kong Country}}s'' Snow Barrel Alley, the game's {{Scrappy Level}}. You had to randomly aim multiple barrels in a row to shoot yourself out of with the hope that you'd land in the next one. It got so bad that callers to the Nintendo hint line were greeted with "If you are playing Donkey Kong Country and stuck in Snow Barrel Alley, press 1."

** That's overthinking it. It doesn't matter what the characters say, the topmost response is a nice one (which you must ''always'' use when interacting with your desired love interest), the bottom one is the nasty one and the middle one is the boring useless one that never gets you KarmaMeter points.
*** Except that there are plenty of times that there are no "top or bottom" responses, or the responses are all on the ''left'' side, or Shepard's demeanor will not match the response. This troper remembers one example in ''MassEffect'' 1 when he simply meant to give someone a polite decline to a question, only to have Shepard jump down the other party's throat and end any hope of a sidequest possibility.

* The suicide mission of ''[[MassEffect Mass Effect 2]]''. The game does it's best to make the crew seem like fleshed out characters with shades of gray. Then it forces you to put them into arbitrary roles such as "the tech guy", "the leader" etc. with very conflicting info. Think the guy who spends his time in the ''tech'' lab is a tech expert... no, he's a biochemist, he can't open doors! How about the most experienced merc who founded his own merc band and was specifically in charge of leading the men... no, he gets everyone killed! The most bitchy woman on your crew, who's last leadership position ended with the destruction of the entire facility, who's very mention of leading the crew is met with ''abject hatred''... perfect! Even if you do everything right, there's a random chance one guy dies at the end anyway.
** The game does offer hints to the "best" choices for the end-game. The biochemist constantly talks about his work with biochemistry and how he prefers to use stealth over gung-ho tactics; the mercenary who founded his own group had been shot in the head by his second in command and tells war stories where everyone else gets killed. The bitchy woman who's also responsible for maintaining high morale onboard your vessel and had been a high-ranking operative before she joined you... It's not so much "trial and error" as it is "talking to your teammates."
*** Indeed. And the only person who objects to Miranda being fire squad leader is Jack, who [[{{Understatement}} really doesn't like her]]. And it's not like she's the only choice to be the leader; Jacob (high-ranking Alliance soldier prior to joining Cerberus) and Garrus [[spoiler:(led small vigilante team on Omega)]] work equally well as her. Everyone else either generally works alone or has a tendency to get their whole squad killed. All of the choices for the suicide mission make a ''lot'' of sense when you [[FridgeBrilliance think about them]]--after all, why pick the biochemist for the hacking job when you have a brilliant engineer, a master thief, and a robot in your party?
** And there is no random chance for someone to die in the end, it depends on the characters' defense and survival skills. You must take the [[SquishyWizard squishiest]] characters with you to the FinalBoss and leave the tanks to hold the line.
** Hence why the game lets you re-read each party member's biography (usually a few paragraphs long) every time you pick a specialist.
*** Also why they aren't subtle. When picking the biotic specialist, for instance, the bios merely mention that Miranda and Jacob are capable biotics, while emphasizing quite strongly that Samara has spent 400 years as a biotic KnightTemplar, and that Jack was quite specifically groomed to '''be''' a fragging powerful biotic.

Amusingly, in EdutainmentGames or Puzzle games, trial and error may actually be the puzzle itself. These count, but barely, because you may not be punished for getting it wrong, since the entire ''point'' is Trial and Error until you get the solution right.

** Similarly, the [[GoddamnedBats Goddamned Drones]] attack in swarms and [[CherryTapping cherry-tap you to death]] with plasma fire, and you often don't see them coming until it's too late to avoid death. [[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous Big "fuck you".]]

* One of Ron Gilbert's complaints in the rant linked above, time limits, is played straight in RAMA. Although your explorations of the titular ship have hitherto been fairly leisurely and forgiving in constraints of time, and death has been a minor setback-a return to a point shortly prior to your death after a few remarks from Arthur C. Clarke that basically boil down to "We put this here, it's pretty apparently dangerous, you screwed with it anyway, try to be more careful in the future". Even after you've crossed the frozen sea and entered the city, things have been undemanding at worst. Through all this your play has been trial-and-error gameplay, but it's justified because you're a scientist studying this ship and you know about as much about it as any other character. Then, the SuddenButInevitableBetrayal happens and you have six real-time hours to solve the problem...while you're standing still. When you move, the game deducts a couple of minutes from this timer to simulate the time it takes for movement. Same for performing an action. So you have significantly less than six hours to get the fuck off the ship, to do it you have to go to a completely new area of the ship, and you're so severely limited for time that the only way to get out in anything like a reasonable number of tries is with guide in hand. Thanks a lot, you bastards.

* ''DwarfFortress''. Unless you read an incredibly comprehensive guide before even downloading the fucking thing (which you probably won't understand anyway; until you play enough to learn the interface, it ''will'' all sound like gibberish), you literally won't even know '''how. To play. The game.''' Until after you've started, been horribly confused by, and lost multiple fortresses. The motto of the game, of course, is [[KobayashiMario "losing is fun."]]

**** For some Halo 2 players (i.e., masochists), because the single player [[{{Understatement}} wasn't exactly up to the E3 2003 demo's standards]], Legendary's ultra-tough experience was [[TropesAreNotBad pretty fun for the above reasons]]. The game's derivative design is less of a problem when you're too worried about Jackal snipers ripping you apart before reaching the next section, or how to solve the next impassable challenge. The Arbiter's stealth ability no longer feels like a gimmick, but a necessary tool for survival. Arming NPCs with efficient weaponry could mean the difference between triumphant victory and cold-blooded defeat. And just in case a player gets caught in a death loop (i.e., when the player immediately gets attacked from a checkpoint and can never get through the section after 30+ tries), Bungie shows some mercy and warps the player back two checkpoints. See kids? [[YourMileageMayVary Trial and error can be fun and fair!]]

* It gets better, as it was later used to make a Choose-Your-Own Adventure game. Sure enough, it's quite easy to die.

**

Amusingly, in EdutainmentGames or Puzzle games, trial and error may actually be the puzzle itself. These count; but barely because you may not be punished for getting it wrong, since the entire ''point'' is Trial and Error until you get the solution right.

[[IWannaBeTheGuy http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/morespikes.png]]
[[caption-width:300:[-It's possible to get out of this situation alive. Good luck figuring it out on the first try.-] ]]

* ''[[MegaManX Mega Man X5]]'' had a motor-bike stage which is basically all trial and error. What makes this noteworthy, though, is that this stage and this stage alone requires the player to jump while the "Ready!" stage start animation is still playing. In all other stages, the player '''can't move''' while the animation is playing. The only way to realize that this stage is special is by dying once. The rest of the level is also an effort in trial and error, as you're often required to make decisions (upper path or lower path?) with no way of knowing what's ahead.
** The same thing happens in ''MegaMan 2''. Specifically Quick Man's infamous laser section. Sure, you can use the time stopper (if you have it) to stop things from moving, but if you did that you wouldn't be able to use it later in the level.
* The whole of ''Mega Man X6''. Specific portions of levels are simply completely impassable if your character can't double jump or air dash.
* ''MegaMan 2'' had two bosses completely invulnerable to the Mega Buster and with only one weapon (each) that worked against them. If you used up too much [[{{Mana}} weapon energy]] for those weapons too early, the battles were {{Unwinnable}} until you either grinded for more weapon energy on the next life, or lost all your lives and used a continue.
* ''MegaMan 9'' also had its "you will die with no warning" moments. On passage in Plug Man's stage looks safe, until a block suddenly materializes in its entrance, sending anyone trying to jump into it to the SpikesOfDoom below. One set of spikes in Splash Woman's stage cannot be seen until you've take the jump, and if you're now aimed for them, the games JumpPhysics aren't enough to let you steer away in time.

* Pretty much any game ever produced by Paradox - with Victoria being the uber example and many of the others not far behind. Not least because either what you need to know is NotInTheManual or TheManualIsWrong.

* At the Legendary difficulty level of Halo 2, the Jackal snipers kill you in a single shot and are surprisingly accurate. They can even shoot before directly aiming and bounce their beams off walls. Thus you are usually not aware of them until you have been killed. The best strategy for dealing with them involves memorising the places they appear in the level.

*** There are lots and lots of scenarious where, in order to survive, you have to know what's coming, be ready for it, and go through all the right motions exactly. (i.e., "Okay, I'll go here, shoot that Sentinal tube, go here, shoot that one, go here, kill that flood wave...") Which you obviously won't unless you've done the section before, and probably gotten killed many times. Many parts are almost choreographed, with there pretty much being one right sequence of when to take cover where, who to shoot when, when to go where, and so one, which you'll pretty much only discover by just doing the section repeatedly, trying tactics and maneuvers, and seeing what works and what doesn't over many attempts.
*** The middle game in a trillogy being more mindless/the worst is something of a Bungie tradition.

* ''Mercenaries 2: World in Flames'' has this annoying type of gameplay in several of the missions. As a particularly frustrating example... Your vehicle: a lightly armoured SUV. Your objective: drive around eight tanks, several static recoilless rifle positions, and multiple rocket grenadiers on your way to the corporate headquarters. Good luck!

**** This becomes more apparent in ''Ace Attorney Invesitagions''. During an arguement with one of the characters, he wants you to prove that two characters in question committed a crime without knowing that they were releated to each other. The answer? [[spoiler: There were three kidnappers, which is the right answer since the character questioning your logic keeps saying there were two kidnappers, but he keeps focusing on the father/daughter relationship, which can throw many people off track and they may also not remember about recently learning there was a 3rd guy.]]

* The flash game ''Life Ark'' - just about any time you click on the wrong spot, the game becomes {{unwinnable}}; and the game only vaguely indicates that this has occurred. (Couldn't you guys have provided an "undo" button, at least?)

* The suicide mission of ''[[MassEffect Mass Effect 2]]''. The game does it's best to make the crew seem like fleshed out characters with shades of grey. Then it forces you to put them into arbitrary roles such as "the tech guy", "the leader" etc. with very conflicting info. Think the guy who spends his time in the ''tech'' lab is a tech expert... no, he's a biochemist, he can't open doors! How about the most experienced merc who founded his own merc band and was specifically in charge of leading the men... no, he gets everyone killed! The most bitchy woman on your crew, who's last leadership position ended with the destruction of the entire facility, who's very mention of leading the crew is met with ''abject hatred''... perfect! Even if you do everything right, there's a random chance one guy dies at the end anyway.

* ''ChronoTrigger'' has the optional boss [[PuzzleBoss Son of Sun]], which is a floating eyeball-like monster with five smaller orbs surrounding it. Attacking it directly doesn't hurt it and triggers a powerul counterattack. Attacking one of the smaller orbs does one of two things: Four of them will trigger counterattacks, and the fifth will cause damage to the boss. They all look exactly the same. To win the fight, you need to attack the smaller orbs until you find the right one, then focus on that one until the boss shuffles them around.

* A particularly bad example can be found in Command And Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising. The final Allied mission has you going up against an Empire commander after choosing one of two locations to build your base on, no big deal. The northeast position looks far, far more defensible and has closer ore nodes, so most players will probably pick it on their first playthrough. However... [[spoiler:As soon as you kill off the Empire commander, the real Big Bad reveals himself and comes gunning for you. The map expands to accomodate his base and guess what - it's DIRECTLY north of the earlier mentioned starting position. Which before marked the edge of the map, so you probably have no defenses there whatsoever. And he starts out with a ridiculously huge and well-equipped strike force already rushing to attack you. Hell, there is a good chance his longer-ranged units will be shelling you before the cutscene even ends. If you didn't know this was coming you are basically GUARANTEED to die, and even when you're prepared it's a difficult battle.]]

* The old SNES game PrinceOfPersia was pretty much built on this from the ground up. The game could (and had to) be completed in a mere two hours; yet people spent days or weeks trying and failing to beat it. This was because perfectly normal looking potions, floor tiles, and platforms would do their darndest to kill you.
** There were hints for most of the traps, at least in the PC version. If you jumped after entering a new room, loose tiles on the same floor (or the ceiling, if you hit it with your jump) would shake a little, indicating that they would collapse if you walked over them. Most dangerous potions also had something that looked wrong with them, and spikes were indicated by holes in the floor tiles. There might have been occasions where there were no hints, but I can't remember any.

* Kirby's dreamland 2 had a section in world 8, where there were the FixedScrollingLevel added with dead ends and no way to go back. There were 3 ways to go. And it happens several times.
* The original ''Wonder Boy'' had platforms floating on the screens alone. Jumping to the next one was a leap of faith based on a random guess that ended in death if you guessed wrong.

* Every single PlatformHell game and Mario hack ever created. Miss that perfect jump between two walls of spikes while dodging numerous Bullet Bills and spin jumping off a conveniantly timed enemy? Instant death to the character. IWannaBeTheGuy, the Unfair Platformer, Sybion Action and [[KaizoMarioWorld Kaizo Mario]] (and every game based off the latter) are common users of this trope.
** To explain the page image from IWannaBeTheGuy - First you have to shoot a spike off the wall so it sticks into the ground to create a platform, then you have to jump on a series of platforms that appear and disappear every second. To make it worse, if you stay on the first platform and [[GenreSavvy watch where the blocks appear]], they will follow a different pattern when you actually jump on them.

[[folder: Live Media ]]

* The "Colm and Jim-Jim" show in Ireland ran a quiz whereby you had to guess "where" Jim-Jim's dad was. However the clues were so useless ("I'm in a city"... days later narrowed down to "I'm not in Europe") that it was pure guess-work. The only way to win was to listen to all the incorrect guesses and cross them off your list.
* Late night TV on various channels in Ireland and UK have "Play TV", and all-night viewer-participating quiz channel. You have to phone a premium rate number for the chance to get through (i.e. you are not guaranteed a chance to get through but you have to pay anyway). Quite often they will run a puzzle with prize money in the thousands, with several seemingly possible answers, none of them correct.
** One of the most infamous was
--->Q. Name something you'd find in a lady's handbag.
--->A: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawl_plug Rawl Plugs]]
[[/folder]]