Cydonia: Mars: The First Manned Mission
1998 Aneiva
Designed by Will Shepherd, Chris Freeman; Shawn Gately, Hank Hatcher
Relevance:
Almost all were irrelvant to plot and setting.
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Real-time:
*) At the beginning, you've got a few minutes to dump the fuel cells, put out
a fire, patch a leaky visor, and free the captain. If you fail, bad things
happen and you have to restart (but you haven't really done anything yet,
so not a problem). Once you get the hang of the controls, it's all very
easy. You might not ever know that there was a time constraint.
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Reasonability:
Some puzzles have arbitrary solutions, i.e., there are several possible
solutions, and you just go through all of them until you get the "right" one:
*) crypt locks -- no connection between the character and the door
*) judge crypt -- top to bottom, bottom to top, left to right, right to left?
all are reasonable, and the interface makes it tedious to run through all.
also other feasible patterns based on the lines...
*) scholar crypt -- why all the make-work with the cards and the drops? and
when you're done, there are again several reasonable orders, tedious to
run through
*) control centre chair -- "on", "start", "go", etc.
*) millstone -- dozen nice patterns, with no clue given to the type of pattern
it wants -- a riddle would have been good here
Other bits of unwarranted tedium:
*) the planets puzzle -- okay puzzle, but then you have to repeat it an
additional 8 times using a bad interface
*) merchant crypt -- opening the drawers
*) pyramid pieces -- nothing but pixel hunting, and the actual construction is
just trial and error
And, in the dirty tricks department:
*) ambassador door lock -- uses the interface to purposefully conceal the clue,
fortunately it's such a trivial task that you're likely to trip it open
without realising how
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Difficulty:
*) flower riddle -- good riddle, where the answer is an action
*) activating control centre chair -- the place for the capstone doesn't even
appear to be a "place"; the activating word is one of dozens or feasible
commands, and its sense relies on knowing what will happen, which is not
clear from the layout
*) whale puzzle -- good puzzle
*) chasm riddles -- good riddles
*) underwater tetrahedron colour puzzle -- the tough part is realising which
machine you have to match the colours with