History GuideDangIt / Adventure

** The third game is particulary full of these, but one stands definetely out: near the end of the game you come across an elevator guarded by a small man with a rifle. The doors of the elevator won't open, the man won't move or interact with you in any way, and differently by the dozens of gunmen that you have met and face up to that point, trying to fight him will result in Carnby being shot dead on the spot. The solution? [[spoiler: You have to pour a bottle of water on the guy, which apparently causes him to pietrify and the doors of the elevator to open]]. The hint? [[spoiler: A criptic poem you find earlier that instructs you to "offer a drink to the man with the carabine"]].

** The third game is particulary full of these, but one stands definetely out: near the end of the game you come across an elevator guarded by a small man with a rifle. The doors of the elevator won't open, and the man won't move or interact with you in any different by shooting you dead if you have the bad idea to fight him. The solution? [[spoiler: You have to pour a bottle of water on the guy, which apparently causes him to pietrify and the doors of the elevator to open]]. The hint? [[spoiler: A criptic poem you find earlier that instructs you to "offer a drink to the man with the carabine"]].

** The third game is particulary full of these, but one stands definetely out: near the end of the game you come across an elevator guarded by a small man with a rifle. Differently by the dozens of gunmen that you have met and defeated up to that point, you can't get past the man by fighting him: trying it result in Carnby being shot dead on the spot. The solution? [[spoiler: You have to pour a bottle of water on the guy, which apparently causes him to pietrify and the doors of the elevator to open]]. The hint? [[spoiler: A criptic poem you find earlier that instructs you to "offer a drink to the man with the carabine"]].

** In Zork II, who would ever guess that [[spoiler:you need to turn off your lamp, in a dark room, to beat the game? An action that normally gets you killed by a grue?]] Until reading the walkthrouh, most players are SURE they tried everything.

* ''VideoGame/TorinsPassage'' is not necessarily [[{{Unwinnable}} impossible]] to win without a guide, but can be a major pain in the ass without a guide on some of its puzzles. More painful examples include the The Lands Above's phenocryst and the crystal used to make its platform usable [[note]] you have to press the shard you get from the guard (Herman) into one of three different colored holes on a control panel (with the exception of the fourth hole, the red hole, which just switch what the other holes do), making pillars rise and fall until you somehow get them all to lower and make the phenocryst usable[[/note]], the Escarpa's tiles to find its phenocryst [[note]] You have to collect a handful of tiles all around the level, which isn't bad in itself, except that you later have to rearrange them on a podium found in the bottom of the world to make a face. Unfortunately there are many shapes you can make that can be deemed by a player as a "face" (nevermind a [[BlatantLies "smiling"]] face, and the hint system is absolutely useless in finding out what the hell the face is supposed to look like[[/note]], Purgola's rearranging of the purgolin priests and priestesses (Ostiaries), both to lead Torin [[spoiler: and Leenah]] to a phenocryst and also to access it [[note]] The first phase is to rearrange the Ostiaries along corners or parts of the pentogram so that each of them line up with every other one in a way they all have at least one trait in common (such as lining up all the Ostiaries whom have a gold belt, who have green hoods, who have white robes, etc) in either lines they're connected to. The second phase involves rearranging them between female and male, and then making them shuffle about in the most inconvenient way possible to hopefully get them to be arranged from the lowest-pitched singer to the highest (for the men) and the highest-pitched singer to the lowest (for the women). It is possible to make the second phase ''much'' easier by [[GoodBadBug keeping a female and male pair on the wrong side of either groups while rearranging the rest in the right order]] before you have to make them sing, but of course the hint system won't tell you that[[/note]], Asthenia's [[PixelHunt huge-ass maze with the tiniest wrench on earth]] [[note]] you need to find a wrench in said huge-ass maze, and the only indication it's there is that it glitters from time to time and that the hint system eludes to it, but won't tell you much else on how to get to it[[/note]] and its crystal lazer puzzle [[note]] rearranging crystals in a box so that a light reflects on them in particular angles written on the crystal. You have to get the light to shine from its source crystal to another crystal on the other side of the box[[/note]] and finally Tenebrous's (The Lands Below's) grass trekking [[note]] after helping the sunflower, you have to navigate over hotspots indicated by the grass telling you variants of "yes" and "no". Of course, said hotspots aren't always consistant and they have [[PixelHunt a relatively small area that'll get them to say "yes" to]], sometimes even making you look back in an area after moving an inch when it is ''now'' deemed safe when before it wasn't[[/note]].
* In ''VideoGame/TheLabyrinthOfTime'', most of the game is standard point and click adventure, but at one point in the game in order to progress you need to move through a "Surreal Maze," which was a repeating room that could only be escaped by going through the exact right path. Very much like the Wind Fish's Egg in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening''. The only problem? Unlike ''Link's Awakening'', there is NO point in the game in which you told this path. Even worse is the fact that there's no pattern to the solution either that you could conceivably guess; it's a COMPLETELY random sequence of paths, and there is NO WAY to finish the game without doing this maze.

* Too many to count in the original ''Franchise/AloneInTheDark'' trilogy, as well as ''Videogame/AloneInTheDarkTheNewNightmare'', but some examples from [[Videogame/AloneInTheDark1992 the first game]]:

** This isn’t a Guide Dang It moment if you know of the myth that there is a worm in the bottles of certain kinds of tequila.

* The interactive fiction game ''[[http://www.wurb.com/if/game/117 Jigsaw]]'' gives you plenty of opportunities to completely screw yourself out of victory without even knowing it. Most of them are about failing to collect all the jigsaw pieces in a time period before doing something that renders them [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost forever]] (an in-game device does tell you if there are pieces you haven't discovered in that time yet, but it won't warn you when you're about to inadvertently make it impossible to get them), but the biggest one by a mile has to be the drawing competition at the very end of the game. To win it, you need to have collected a sketchbook and pencil hidden in a stool at the beginning of the game and sketched at least four animals over the course of the game. There's little indication in the game that this will become vital later on, and if you don't do it, you fail to get the competition prize ''and'' can't complete the game without it, even after you've spent hours slogging through all these historical {{Timed Mission}}s beforehand. ''Guide dang it!''

** How about the hidden reactor in the junk pile in [[VideoGame/SpaceQuestIIIThePiratesOfPestulon part 3?]] Absolutely no hint is given that the thing is even there--for one thing, it's ''hidden behind the scenery''--but without it, the game comes to a dead stop. And this is one of the first puzzles that you have to solve in the entire game; you've barely started and you're already irredeemably stuck. That is, unless you either purchase a hint book or call the hint line (which conveniently charges per minute and, at the time, wasn't operational outside normal business hours anwyay).

** Early on, doing something insignificant that one would do out of [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished kindness]] immediately locks the player from achieving the good ending. If one decides to [[spoiler: light a fire in Yuka's room]], that character is doomed to die. Nothing in the game indicates that this has an effect, not even one this big, or that it influences your ending.

* In the parody ''VideoGame/TakeshisChallenge'', playing music will for some reason stop a cannibal native from boiling you into soup.

** In ''VideoGame/KingsQuestI'', "Ifnkovhgroghprm" was the infamous solution to a puzzle where a certain old gnome challenges Graham to guess his name in three tries. The only clues were that "Rumplestiltskin" is "close, but no cigar" (which requires using up one guess), and a note from a witch's cottage advising that it is sometimes wise to "think backwards". In the original version, this implied [[MoonLogicPuzzle using an alphabetic cipher]] with A=Z, B=Y, and so on ... which very few players -- even the hardened adventure gamers ''of the day'' -- could figure out without resorting to the [[RevenueEnhancingDevices official hint book]]. When Sierra created the game's EnhancedRemake, the solution was simplified to "Nikstlitselpmur" .
*** The original solution to the gnome puzzle also works in the EnhancedRemake, so people who played the original don't have to guess the updated solution.
** In ''VideoGame/KingsQuestII'', a [[MemeticMutation pOIsonous]] snake blocks one path and getting too close will make it bite and kill Graham. What do you do? Throw a bridle on the snake, which transforms it into a flying horse. Well, or kill it with your sword.

** The sequel, ''VideoGame/{{Riven}}'' contains a more {{egregious}} one in the form of the "Animals Puzzle", which precious few gamers can honestly claim to have solved without a walkthrough. The problem wasn't coming up with the solution; that was difficult but not entirely impossible. The real problem was that, once you knew the right animals in the right order, the "keypad" you had to enter them into was not well-labeled, and it took forever to try to enter one particular permutation. Imagine a 10-digit keypad that actually has 20 keys, but some of the digits 0-9 are repeated. Except that, even though it looks like there are three 9's, only one of them is the ''real'' 9, and the others are fake even though they look very much like a 9. And the only way to tell which is real is to enter all of the permutations of the correct code. ''And'' it takes 30 seconds to enter a 5-digit number.

* NES adventure game ''Willow'' suffers from this at times. While the game is, overall, rather linear, there is often no in-game indication whatsoever that performing action A leads to location B opening up. Probably the most {{egregious}} example is early on when you talk to one of the Nail Clan and he tells you that they make their home in the forest. Later, you have to talk to one of them to get an item that allows you to progress (Which actually '''is''' mentioned in-game), and you find him in an area that's much closer to a mountain that it is a forest. Further, brute-force exploration is the only way to figure out the precise square the Clansman and item is on, at least at first.
* While Point-And-Click adventures are almost guaranteed to have a few Guide Dang It moments for players who fail to catch a ride on the designer's particular train of thought, ''VideoGame/{{Shadowgate}}'' for the NES is an {{egregious}} example. Many of the puzzles were instant death if you failed to solve them on the first try or within a few seconds of seeing them and more than a few things were capable of being Lost Forever.

** Disappointingly, the sequel ''Pursuit'' engages in this {{egregious}}ly. During the opening of the game, the police detective protagonist refuses to leave her house before gathering such objects as a banana, her favorite teddy bear, and ''the lightbulbs from her kitchen light fixture.'' One has to wonder if it's standard police procedure in Australia for the officer to ransack her own home before taking on a case.

** Even more {{egregious}}ly is the [[SoulJar soul vial]] puzzle, where the player needs to fill an empty (green-tinted) vial with liquid to replace it with a vial containing a warrior's soul, which shines green in the vial. To do this, players are expected to fill the vial with water [[WaterIsBlue (which shines through as a blue colour, as opposed to clear as real-life water should)]] and mix some saffron into it to turn the water green (not that many players even know what saffron is or what it does in the first place, and those who do probably already know that saffron makes water yellow, not green).

* IllusionOfGaia had plenty of these, including but not limited to a puzzle where you had to stand still on a glowing tile for about 20 seconds, a point where you could not proceed without reading a letter that a party member ''slipped into your inventory while you were sleeping'', a fair number of small, essential items lying in completely arbitrary places somewhere in enormous dungeons that you could only find by a glint of light they would give off every few seconds, and a BonusDungeon that you could only access by collecting ''all 50'' of the Red Jewels scattered throughout the game with no clear pattern, most of which would be [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost forever if you missed them]]. Fortunately, [[AllThereInTheManual the game's manual included a mini-walkthrough]] that would clue you in to the solutions of the more obscure puzzles.

* Those flipping pictures frames in ''{{Ty the Tasmanian Tiger}}'', which are not only in ''invisible crates'' and need a particular 'rang to find (forcing you to search through every nook and cranny of ''every. Single. Level.''), but are ''required'' if you want to [[OneHundredPercentCompletion access]] [[SecretLevel the Secret Level]]. Oh, and the best part? Once you've accessed the Secret Level, ''123 more pictures frames become avaliable to find''. Krome sure can be a bitch.

* Some of the Lost and Found items in ''FlowerSunAndRain'' are pretty straightforward. Some of them... not so much. For instance, the third one in Scenario 4 has the hint that the guest in room 407 drank all the cocktails from the restaurant, and they're worried because that's a lot of alcohol. No, you're not supposed to add together all the alcoholic ingredients listed for the cocktails. No, you're not supposed to add together all the ingredients, alcoholic or otherwise, either. You're supposed to add together the alcoholic concentration of the drink, that for someone without enough chemistry knowledge would be indistinguishable from temperature. Try guessing ''that'' without looking it up.

* Zig-Zagged in ''[[VideoGame/WhereInTimeIsCarmenSandiego1997 Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time''. The hints are provided in-game for pretty much everything - however, during each case, you must find three pieces of a carmen note before you can get the criminals arrested. In Japan, there's a notable example: Two of the Carmen Notes are easily found. However, one piece is obtained instead by talking to the guards - and there are four of them. While it's always the same guard who has it, not everyone will figure out that yes, the criminal ''did'' go through there. This is a very minor example for two reasons:

* Zig-Zagged in ''CarmenSandiego Great Chase Through Time''. The hints are provided in-game for pretty much everything - however, during each case, you must find three pieces of a carmen note before you can get the criminals arrested. In Japan, there's a notable example: Two of the Carmen Notes are easily found. However, one piece is obtained instead by talking to the guards - and there are four of them. While it's always the same guard who has it, not everyone will figure out that yes, the criminal ''did'' go through there. This is a very minor example for two reasons:

*** But there is a painting in the gallery that hints this.

* An example where the [[EarnYourBadEnding bad ending is harder to get than the good endings]] is the MyLittlePony fangame SuperFillyAdventure. In order to get it, you have to talk to everybody, and play at 11:30pm to 6:00am. [[ShmuckBait Though, it's better]] [[NightmareFuel to not get it.]]

* The ''VideoGame/KingsQuest'' series, being both an AdventureGame and of {{Sierra}} pedigree, is replete with examples:

* English adventure game ''The Guild Of Thieves'' used this in the worst way: at one point, the player is asked to cross a path of coloured squares in a pattern. While the the player gets the correct path, the game will '''not''' tell you how the squares are laid out. The solution: consult a paper map that was included with the game.

* Some of the Lost and Found items in ''FlowerSunAndRain'' are pretty straightforward. Some of them... not so much. For instance, the third one in Scenario 4 has the hint that the guest in room 407 drank all the cocktails from the restaurant, and they're worried because that's a lot of alcohol. No, you're not supposed to add together all the alcoholic ingredients listed for the cocktails. No, you're not supposed to add together all the ingredients, alcoholic or otherwise, either. You're supposed to add together the the alcoholic concentration of the drink, that for someone without enough chemistry knowledge would be indistinguishable from temperature. Try guessing ''that'' without looking it up.

* Point-and-click game ''VideoGame/{{KGB}}'' has the main character discover a clue leading him to a fishing boat about to leave town near the end of chapter two, but the game simply does not allow him to go to the docks unless he meets with an accomplice in the park and compares some rather unrelated information first - and said accomplice won't be in the park unless you talked to him earlier in the game and agreed on this meeting, even though there was no indication towards this being nessecary, and you even being told specifically NOT to contact him at that point by an ally you had no reason to distrust. The game has a few more such moments (including one where you need to be at a certain place at a certain time in order to see one of the villains drive off, letting you trail him to your next destination. The game never even remotely hints at what you're supposed to do at this point), but this one is the most game-breaking in that you know what you are supposed to do, but the game just won't let you actually do it before you've done something else you never knew you were supposed to have activated in the first place. The fact that you learn nothing important from this guy, and he never does anything particularly helpful after this point does not help the case.

* An example where the bad ending is harder to get then the good endings is the MyLittlePony fangame SuperFillyAdventure. In order to get it, you have to talk to everybody, and play at 11:30pm to 6:00am. [[ShmuckBait Though, it's better]] [[NightmareFuel to not get it.]]

** How about the hidden reactor in the junk pile in [[VideoGame/SpaceQuestThePiratesOfPestulon part 3?]] Absolutely no hint is given that the thing is even there--for one thing, it's ''hidden behind the scenery''--but without it, the game comes to a dead stop. And this is one of the first puzzles that you have to solve in the entire game; you've barely started and you're already irredeemably stuck. That is, unless you either purchase a hint book or call the hint line (which conveniently charges per minute and, at the time, wasn't operational outside normal business hours anwyay).