Death traps with no warning?

[crayauchtin]

Ohhhhh yeahhhhhhh. That damn lamp!

[Rick_Florez]

I get what your complaining about now.  And its true that there is noting that tells Graham that he should find a clever way of getting the key because otherwise he might die.

Its not unheard of in adventure games.  There has always been this holy trinity between the main character, the narrator and the player where they seem to share ideas psychically among themselves because many times there is no way the main character could ever be that observant or have such foresight.

If you want to something really illogical how the heck do these characters carry around a closet full of stuff in their pockets.  Leisure Larry 2 is a great example when you get the huge cup soda that's bigger than Larry and just shove it in your pocket comically.

Getting back to the death, I would leave the hand on hole killing without warning because I like catching the eager beavers off guard however you are right, the look at icon should at least give you a reason for it to be potentially dangerous.

[KatieHal]

KQ5 just had SO many WTF solutions. Honey and emeralds to lure out elves to escape the forest? Elves we'd never seen or heard of, much less knew what they liked to collect? Wha?? Cheese will turn on the wand machine? Yetis destroyed by pie?

One dead-ender there that I never knew about til I watched an LP was that you can pay to see Madam Mushka with the golden needle instead of a coin, and then you're screwed because you can't get the cloak for the mountains. Although the LPer stopped recording at that point, since he was in a no-win game, but I always wondered if maybe you could then pay for the cloak with the gold coin instead. That would've been an acceptable work around.

[crayauchtin]

Rick, that's not illogical http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HyperspaceArsenal at all.

[kindofdoon]

One dead-ender there that I never knew about til I watched an LP was that you can pay to see Madam Mushka with the golden needle instead of a coin, and then you're screwed because you can't get the cloak for the mountains.

That's exactly what happened when I played KQV for the first time.

[crayauchtin]

Can't you also use a gold coin to buy the cloak though? I mean, the tailor says it costs a gold coin. So if you give the golden needle to the gypsies, you can still buy the cloak, right?

PS That tailor is the most offensive thing in any KQ, and the fact the companion named him "Tailor Fey" did not help.

[Rosella]

"I hope I don't meet any offensive stereotypes while I'm here!"

And yeah, I always knew you could pay the tailor with a gold coin, what I wasn't sure about was if the gypsies would take a needle.

[Jafar]

Yeah, the gold coin and needle are interchangable like the boot and stick. You can also buy stuff with the golden heart, which actually WILL get you in trouble.

[Rosella]

...Well that's just cold.

[Rick_Florez]

Hehe I know of the subspace explaination for this kind of stuff.  Its been used in Transformers to explain things like where does Prime's trailer go and why can Megatron change his mass.

Subspace makes more sense in Space Quest or sci-fiction and I'm sure we'll be using that excuse in C9 at some point.  For King's Quest I tend to go with the magical approach much like the Legend of Zelda Cartoons used to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yYohAySKm4&feature=related at around 3:47

As for Leisure Suit Larry I just assume he had huge holds in his pockets that allowed him to put stuff in the gaps between the inner and outer layers of his jacket.    Any of you ever lose change in the inner linings of an old jacket and hear the clinging of coins even though your pockets are empty only to find a coin like bump in the sleeve?  

[kindofdoon]

I don't exactly remember how I got stuck. I do know that I gave the needle to Mushka, but then somehow I couldn't get the cloak...Can't remember.

[Jafar]

Maybe you accidently bought the pie with the gold coin or something?

[kindofdoon]

Nope, I did that the right way. It also had something to do with not being able to trade the marionette for the sled, I think. Maybe?

[Jafar]

Hmm...I've never heard of those problems. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to trade the marionette for the sled. Unless you've already traded something else for it...do you remember any messages or anything?

[kindofdoon]

No, I don't; it was a while ago.

[crayauchtin]

Maybe you never picked up the coin? It's definitely possible to do that.

[OrangeShirt]

Space Quest is probably not the best game to use as an excuse for having any amounts of death traps and dead ends. The purpose of those games were to ridicule you and make you frustrated. That was the whole fun of the game!

That said, the only death that I have to complain about is [spoiler]the widow spider. I looked at the door, didn't even see the spider web, and attempted to walk right in.[/spoiler] D'oh!

Otherwise, I found [spoiler]the key in the hole trap rather amusing![/spoiler] It was obviously a trap, and my mind figured that doing the first step to that solution was all that was needed to be done. Ha ha!

[Roivas]

The spider death was something I really didn't see coming but that was because I wasn't expecting a deadly black widow to be waiting to bite anyone who came near it to be in the middle of the damn town! You'd think that people would object to a murderous sentient creature adjacent to the streets where children could be playing. I mean it IS on the way to the candy cart.

The door trap in the wall did irritate me a little but that's because I didn't understand why I couldn't just grab the magnet. If they'd made a scene where the magnet attracts the coins (which shouldn't work if they were pure gold, which I think the game states such many times) something when you try talking to it instead of when you try to grab the thing it wouldn't have been as much of a moment of not understanding the interface.

I honestly didn't know why I couldn't just grab the damn thing. If it tried running away like the Hole in the Wall creature I would've been able to work it out much faster. Though why would the Isle of Wonder folks put the only key to unlocking the door to Chessboard Land in a death trap when most of them don't have arms and they can't reach it from the other side?

Even with the somewhat cheap and slightly illogical deaths I enjoyed this episode. Though the solution to far too many puzzles was the bag of infinite money. I should probably mention that the map salesman probably shouldn't have been impressed or even willing to sell an accurate map of the islands for one gold coin. Cartography is very difficult when you have to physically travel there to get an idea of what the shape of the islands might be.

Anyhow, a couple of strange moments here and there but I do think you guys have vastly improved very quickly. I look forward to the third episode whenever it is ready.

[snabbott]

Mag-Gnat does actually attract your coins if you walk past it. As for a magnet attracting gold - well, this is the Isle of Wonder, after all. How many things there DO make sense?

[kindofdoon]

Haha, that's true; I never thought about that. Perhaps it was a gold-iron alloy...