Lock & Key

eu, December 26, 2009 - Reply
The first time I played Lock & Key, I got hung up for a bit because the rules for door placement aren't made immediately clear. Each door has two sides, one that can be opened by a silver key and one that can be opened by the gold key. You are required to build a single circuit that permits someone to start at the stairwell, visit the cell, and continue back to the stair with only one key; any other arrangement will be rejected with one of these error messages:

``There is already a path into/out of this room. Not only would offering multiple paths in/out leave the guards hopelessly confused, but the Labyrinth Guild would quite literally have your head for muscling in on their turf without a membership card.''

``The guards' guild insists that dungeons be designed such that every chamber that can be entered with a silver key can also be left with a silver key. No dead ends allowed, not even the cell. You'll have to open a door out of chamber XY.''

``Even the best guards find it difficult to escort prisoners to a cell when there's no path leading there. You'll need to provide a way to get from the stairs to the cell using only a silver key.''

Unfortunately, the explanation of the gold and silver keys when the first door is placed gave me the wrong impression:

``This door can be unlocked with a silver key, one of which will be given to every guard. However, from the other direction the door can only be unlocked with a gold key, which guards will only be given at the end of their shifts and which must be immediately returned to the Dungeon Master. This little innovation keeps the guards from wandering off duty -- unless they're willing to go through the cell to do it.''

It certainly sounds like this innovation is only installed in one door, and, after all, you only see that message the first time you open a door. So under that assumption, the direction that you open any other door will not matter. But in fact it does because you must open doors from the silver key side. Unless the player realizes this, he or she will eventually be confronted with a seemingly spurious ``There is already a path into/out of this room...'' and be much confused.

If in fact this is the issue you mean, then you've got a case: the game has the potential to irk the player because it depends on a concept that isn't clearly explained. And I as a player would like to know that going in, just like you say, so it's fine to take up this point in your review.

The trouble of course is that without playing the game myself I don't know what you mean by ``something wrong.'' Nor did everyone reach the conclusion that it ``just doesn't work at all.'' For a helpful review you need to be specific: what did you think the rules for door placement were, what sequence of actions did you expect to work, and what did the game say when it didn't? And then ask someone who has made it through for help; please don't be so quick to deem a game unfinishable.

Remember, you can revise the review, and we can revise our votes. I at least would be curious to know what wall you ran up against.

AmberShards, December 18, 2009 - Reply
I see you couldn't pass up the opportunity to tell someone else that their experience or that their opinion is invalid. Stay classy.