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9 people found the following review helpful:
 Unfair, January 7, 2019by Dan Fabulich I'm not at all sure that Anchorhead has any "fair" puzzles in Emily Short's sense. https://xyzzyawards.org/?p=386 Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
Comments on this reviewPrevious | << 1 >> | Next Joey Jones, January 7, 2019 - Reply I think the design of Anchorhead, perhaps more than many games, works to the exact degree to which you've internalized the same adventure game norms as the author. I had no trouble with the majority of the puzzles myself because at all times I was following the hidden dictates of convention. (I've only played the original, mind.) For me, the alley next to the estate agency was clearly a push-object-to-climb puzzle, the likes of which I had played many times before. Dan Fabulich, January 8, 2019 - Reply In isolation, it would be a fair puzzle, but when surrounded by dozens of rooms full of not-yet-solvable puzzles, it looks like yet another not-yet-solvable puzzle. Guessing that this puzzle is solvable is what makes it unfair; it forces you to read the author's mind. Note that if you talk to Michael in the library, he just tells you to keep waiting for the real-estate agent, which suggests that you should wait, or that the puzzle isn't solvable yet. On the other hand, if you happen to get lucky and go southeast to the alley, maybe you won't happen to have seen dozens of unsolvable puzzles before this one; at that point, the puzzle is perhaps acceptable. But that's just the first puzzle; none of the rest of the puzzles in the game are solvable on Day 1, whereas many of them (but not all of them) are solvable on Day 2, for no reason. Some puzzles are solvable on Day 2 and not Day 3, which is even worse. |