Quote:
Originally Posted by Oblarg
For a very loose definition of "bearing." IIRC, the game hint for Lunacy was a picture of a fish (admittedly it was a "moon fish," but still...).
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The thing is, for a game hint to be of actual use, fully solving it without any further context must provide
tangible insight into how the "solution" could actually manifest itself in the game, or at the very least, steer your pre-kickoff thoughts in a relevantly focused direction. With this in mind, lets look at some solutions to recent game hints:
2014: Assists. Gives us a part of the game name, and the nebulous idea that passing will be useful. Nothing to suggest how this will be put in practice, nothing to suggest big balls, launching, 2008 throwback, etc. As a designer,
no benefit.
2013: Reference to a pyramid, disks, and using weight to calculate score. Quite a stretch to go from "pyramid" to "climb this weird pipe structure sequentially with very specific rules". Same with disks, there are a lot of disk objects that could have been used. And what on earth were we supposed to learn about gameplay by knowing that weight would be used for measuring something? As a designer,
very marginal benefit requiring lucky guesses.
2012: High speed counters, rapid real time scoring. An element of several very different games before and after 2012. No information whatsoever to point to balls, shooting, or bridges. As a designer,
no benefit.
2011: Locomotion + Logo = Logomotion, to a lesser extent, pillar --> minibot pole. No way to determine the minibot task, or even the very concept of minibots. No way to determine the name of the game will be implemented through inner tubes on pegs. As a designer,
no benefit.
2010: If I recall, someone actually did reverse engineer the CAD drawing to estimate a gamepiece roughly the diameter of a soccer ball. Soccer-esque rules had to be pulled from thin air, as 2002 showed that soccer balls as a gamepiece didn't necessarily mean kicking mechanisms. And the extra gate nebulously suggested field obstruction, leading to thoughts about rough terrain drives. Absolutely nothing to suggest hanging. As a designer,
very marginal benefit from the gate, potentially more benefit from the soccer ball.
2009: Moonfish. Without any more information, very hard to jump from this to a simulation of reduced gravity. Nothing to suggest mass ball game, or the funky design of the Moonrocks. As a designer,
no benefit.
For the past 6 years, there has been very little to gain from the game hints
even if they are fully solved, and absolutely nothing of value from four of the six when you consider what you can learn from them without the benefit of hindsight. This is why I, and most people who have been around for a while, just filter out the inevitable 500+ post thread each year, and don't expend effort searching for these unofficial "hints," much less trying to solve them.