Things I Learned from Adventure Games

That's funny, I've learned something more like:<p>1. If you see something you can put in your pocket, do so.<p>2. Whenever you're in a new place, look at everything and try to use it. Even better, put it in your pocket.<p>3. When you're done with that, use everything you've put in your pockets with everything else in the room.<p>I admit my lessons are less practical for real life, but they have helped me finish a lot of adventure games.

I agree with most of this. I think the post demonstrates what a chore some adventure games can be when you get stuck on a puzzle: waste hours trying to get past it (before wasting hours on the next puzzle) or cheat and lose the satisfaction of having figured it out yourself.

Not bad, but I'd re-write the first point as: You can solve the problem in front of you with the tools you have more often than you think.

I agree. I did the original colossal cave on 8.5 floppies on ISIS In Circuit Emulators at AES back in 77 or so, when I was first exposed to UNIX, I had to examine the sectors to see the solution - the program was written in FORTRAN, by the way...

point 1 is completely not true. most adventure games I've played require things from many screens to be solved before moving on to the next puzzle. monkey island springs to mind as the most obvious example of this.