7 Impossible Puzzles You Had No Chance of Solving Alone

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  • čas přidán 15. 05. 2024
  • Some videogame puzzles are so impossibly hard, so brain meltingly complex, that we cannot fathom how anyone was able to figure them out without a walkthrough. Watch on for 7 of the toughest puzzles in videogame history, and subscribe for more videos like this from Outside Xbox!
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Komentáře • 1,3K

  • @chrisschoenthaler5184
    @chrisschoenthaler5184 Před 9 měsíci +1845

    The fact that the Fez puzzle was solved by hundreds of people working together to brute-force an answer through process of elimination is both inspiring and disappointing.

    • @renobutters
      @renobutters Před 9 měsíci +58

      I wonder why they didn't simply reverse engineer the program... Like, disassembling it or something.

    • @skvaderarts7009
      @skvaderarts7009 Před 9 měsíci +238

      @@renobutters ... Probably because the vast majority of people have literally no idea how to do that.

    • @ThePhantomStinker
      @ThePhantomStinker Před 9 měsíci +282

      It's probably for the better. I'm not sure I want to know the "solution" of a puzzle concocted by the mind of a man who rage-quit his entire career just because people were picking on him online.

    • @alexanderekblom8093
      @alexanderekblom8093 Před 9 měsíci +128

      ​@@skvaderarts7009that's how people figured out how to unlock "the lost" in 'The Binding of Isaac', so it's definitely a fair question. That said, if Fez is console exclusive, that would complicate the reverse engineering approach.

    • @Grimrapings
      @Grimrapings Před 9 měsíci +254

      Disappointing? Nah. At some point, you have to just call it a bad puzzle.

  • @lozzimusprime
    @lozzimusprime Před 9 měsíci +1116

    People who create walkthroughs for ridiculous puzzle games are true heroes.

    • @Avalon_1991
      @Avalon_1991 Před 9 měsíci +12

      I wouldn't have finished Uncharted 4 without them

    • @evilpompom
      @evilpompom Před 9 měsíci +5

      That they are!

    • @0002pA
      @0002pA Před 9 měsíci +1

      Lmao

    • @danielsand500
      @danielsand500 Před 9 měsíci +1

      B bb🎉😏

    • @nathangoedeke694
      @nathangoedeke694 Před 9 měsíci +22

      Idk how often it is the case, but some walkthroughs are written by the developers or people who hacked the game source code, meaning that no one actually solved the puzzle conventionally.

  • @brknglasses2734
    @brknglasses2734 Před 9 měsíci +683

    One of the best feelings in all of gaming is coming back to a hard puzzle you couldn't solve as a kid, and nailing it!
    One of the worst is coming back to those puzzles you could never solve; and realizing nothing has changed.

    • @GardinerAlan
      @GardinerAlan Před 9 měsíci +16

      The final Witness puzzle w/ the Hall of the Mountain King soundtrack. I could get to the final pillars but never quite to the final door

    • @HoradeFidges
      @HoradeFidges Před 9 měsíci +67

      And directly the worse is coming back to a puzzle you beat as a kid easily and now have not a single clue how to complete it

    • @3possumsinatrenchcoat
      @3possumsinatrenchcoat Před 9 měsíci +46

      honestly sometimes it's a relief. "oh was I just a dumb kid? no, the developers were just smoking crack when they cooked up these supposed puzzles."

    • @TheOmegaXicor
      @TheOmegaXicor Před 9 měsíci +28

      the absolute worst is coming back to a puzzle you nailed first time as a kid and not remembering how or being able to figure it out now without a guide.

    • @misticsword7561
      @misticsword7561 Před 9 měsíci +9

      Even worse, is coming back to a puzzle you solved easily as a kid, but you don't remember the solution and now you just can't get it solve.

  • @mattball8622
    @mattball8622 Před 9 měsíci +511

    I love that you can tell that Andy's 'instructions' are actually a D&D character sheet

    • @archerelms
      @archerelms Před 9 měsíci +18

      Glad I'm not the only one that noticed, I love it too

    • @Dr.Callaham
      @Dr.Callaham Před 9 měsíci +21

      So what...Did Andy make a character with the instructions, wonder how complex that character would be if that is the case

    • @bast713
      @bast713 Před 9 měsíci +6

      I thought so!

    • @gingipride
      @gingipride Před měsícem +1

      I just saw this now and had to search the comments!

  • @saoirsedeltufo7436
    @saoirsedeltufo7436 Před 9 měsíci +104

    I'm so used to clickbait that I naturally assumed these would be tricky but doable puzzles but no, you weren't wrong, these are absolutely ridiculous. 10/10 video

    • @casedistorted
      @casedistorted Před 3 měsíci +2

      Tbf the riven fire marble puzzle was totally possible by yourself without the very small internet back then.
      It was tough but doable

  • @K4RN4GE911
    @K4RN4GE911 Před 9 měsíci +484

    "A good puzzle makes you feel smart once you have that 'AHA!' moment, while a bad one hides half the pieces from you!"
    - Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +11

      what about a puzzle where half the puzzle is finding the pieces?

    • @K4RN4GE911
      @K4RN4GE911 Před 9 měsíci +68

      @@marhawkman303 Well, it needs to be telegraphed well enough that you would know where said pieces were through the right logical process, otherwise it's frustrating. It's a delicate balance.

    • @MidBoss666
      @MidBoss666 Před 9 měsíci +8

      I see you have good taste in shows, my friend ^^

    • @Bakerstreetgaming
      @Bakerstreetgaming Před 9 měsíci

      Riven is the one game I can not complete

    • @Bakerstreetgaming
      @Bakerstreetgaming Před 9 měsíci +2

      What about grannies garden and the 4 dragons puzzle

  • @Jaknize1
    @Jaknize1 Před 9 měsíci +581

    Played myst and Riven back in the day with my Dad. Took us 2 years to figure out the marble puzzle. One day it just hit my Dad and we got it. It was overly complicated.

    • @DeSardet46
      @DeSardet46 Před 9 měsíci +42

      Nah mate, he totally looked it up. After two years, who wouldn't?

    • @z216ghost
      @z216ghost Před 9 měsíci +17

      I remember my first playthrough of Myst, and forgetting the #$&%$$&&$$=&*&%$_

    • @Jaknize1
      @Jaknize1 Před 9 měsíci

      @@DeSardet46 No he didn't lol This was over 20 years ago man when we wouldn't really even know where to go on the internet to find something like this. CZcams probably wasn't even a thing yet. We didn't have a strategy guide. We stopped playing for most of that 2 until we just randomly went back and messed around with it. I was watching when we figured it out. Plus why would I bother to comment if we had looked it up lol makes no sense to lie about something like that. So no mate, he didn't look it up.

    • @aliyada
      @aliyada Před 9 měsíci +58

      The OG Myst shipped with a notebook to help figure things out. My dad completely filled it between Myst and Riven, and figured out so many of the puzzles
      I am so glad that you also have fond memories involving your father and this series

    • @djshanz8585
      @djshanz8585 Před 9 měsíci

      ​@@DeSardet46they finally had internet 😂

  • @MegaBearsFan
    @MegaBearsFan Před 9 měsíci +284

    Really surprised not to see the final puzzle of P.T. in this list, considering that it was deliberately designed to require international cooperation over the internet, it was only solved because somebody accidentally stumbled onto the solution, and (like with Fez) the community still doesn't exactly know what the solution actually is supposed to be, or how the developers intended players to solve it.

    • @ComicCrossing
      @ComicCrossing Před 8 měsíci +3

      How does someone accidentally solve a puzzle like that?

    • @DannyboyO1
      @DannyboyO1 Před 8 měsíci +31

      @@ComicCrossing The magical power of "fucking around", and HUGE numbers of players. A 1 in a million chance, if you've got 30 million players, is probably going to happen at least once.

    • @dvdbox360
      @dvdbox360 Před 8 měsíci +2

      ​@@DannyboyO1if i wasn't mistaken it was a british girl that first figure it out

  • @Daijaga
    @Daijaga Před 8 měsíci +100

    My teenage son and I solving the Tunic puzzle together was the highlight of my gaming year last year. Ill never forget us flipping the pages and drawing the map, finding the extra save file, hurriedly jamming in the hundred keys....such a cool culmination of gaming we got to share together

    • @vincentwatson2960
      @vincentwatson2960 Před 5 měsíci +1

      But, how did you find the extra save puzzle?
      Was there a clue?

    • @Daijaga
      @Daijaga Před 5 měsíci +3

      @vincentwatson2960 idk exactly what the requirements are for the save file to appear but I must have completed them organically. I also played it over the course of a couple weeks so I turned the game on and off many times and found the file organically as well, pretty early on before I had any clue what the Golden Path was. Once we started filling it in and got to the page 9 section, it illustrates the fox wondering about the save screen, so with the context we had already learned up till then and having wandered around there a few times it clicked right away.

    • @smalf00
      @smalf00 Před měsícem

      ​@@vincentwatson2960i also solved it by myself, i found the extra save by just recognizing they wouldnt have there be no golden path in the menu page for nothing, espesically since the game autosaves, and saw the fox was confhsed about the hidden gold question block so i quit and went to the load screen and found nothing, then just went through every option and when i went back the load screen it was there, so if the only requirement was just to close the load screen i guess i did extra, but im not sure whst the requirements were since the narrator was wrong about what some lines meant (a dash through a line doesnt mean ignore it, it means you need to do that imput again)

  • @twinklefeet
    @twinklefeet Před 9 měsíci +350

    You could probably make an entire list of these purely from the Discworld games. I love them, but some of the puzzles are incredibly inscrutible. Such as the one where you need to travel back in time to the previous evening, put a frog in your past self's sleeping mouth to attract a butterfly, the wings flapping causing a localised rainstorm over a monk in a completely different location via "chaos theory", who then hangs his robe out to dry, which you can then steal and use as a disguise. The puzzle was so obnoxious they made fun of it in the second game.

    • @dobbinb76
      @dobbinb76 Před 9 měsíci +31

      I came to write something similar, "Discworld, yes all of it" the first Discworld game is just a total mind frak of puzzles, the second is just marginally easier and Discworld noir about the same, but the first is just ridiculous.
      Now I've written all that I'm going to have to play them again this weekend, and no doubt feel dumb all over again

    • @MidBoss666
      @MidBoss666 Před 9 měsíci +35

      To be honest, the general weirdness and abundance of "moon logic" are very fitting the Discworld setting XD
      At the very least, none of those games require you to impersonate someone using their ID, but using a fake moustache and scribbling one on said ID to do so.

    • @DanRPGMan
      @DanRPGMan Před 9 měsíci +6

      Don't forget to give prunes to a vendor in order for said vendor to use a toilet and drop his pants in order to get his gold belt buckle to give to an octopus. I call it 'Discworld Logic'

    • @OrangeDog20
      @OrangeDog20 Před 9 měsíci +7

      Also if you release the butterfly in the wrong place it doesn't work, you can never get it back, and you have to restart the game.

    • @TheOctavian316
      @TheOctavian316 Před 9 měsíci +3

      @@DanRPGMan That's not it. You have to give the octopus a love potion, and put it into the fishmonger's dunny so when you give him prunes and he rushes off to the loo, the octopus grabs him and stops him being able to grab his gold belt buckle away from you.

  • @jackiehazlett7888
    @jackiehazlett7888 Před 9 měsíci +186

    My mom and I used to play Riven together back in the day and the puzzle that stumped us was the animal sound in the stone circle puzzle. Ended up buying the guidebook just for that answer and played the rest clean. We had a full notebook going and circled around so many times trying to figure out what we... myst. I'll see myself out.

    • @BooBaddyBig
      @BooBaddyBig Před 9 měsíci +17

      The fing animal sound. You heard it once, and you were supposed to remember it when you needed it which could be months later. Like WTF.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +8

      A lot of these old games EXPECTED out-of-game records.

    • @MarkDeSade100
      @MarkDeSade100 Před 9 měsíci +7

      @@marhawkman303 I remember when some RPGs required the player to draw their own map on grid paper. It was fun for a while, but I love auto-mapping so much now.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +2

      @@MarkDeSade100 Oh I did that incessantly with Dragon Quest Monsters 2. It had randomized levels that didn't have relevant maps since any in-game map was merely the CURRENT floor. So I drew on paper actual layouts with multiple levels.
      also in that game you kinda needed to write down what your skill planning was going to be as it had an esoteric method to upgrade skills that required having a collection of specific skills.

    • @barretxiii27
      @barretxiii27 Před 9 měsíci +2

      @@marhawkman303 Yup. Escape from Monkey Island was a notorious offender. The Monkey Kombat minigame, which was necessary for story progression, had you switch between several stances to beat your opponent, in a twist on Rock-Paper-Scissors. Unfortunately, to switch stances, you had to memorize a series of input combinations to go from one specific stance to another. Not only were there dozens of combos, they were all RANDOMIZED for each playthrough!
      Thankfully PS2 players were spared this horror, and not only did they remove the randomization, they also gave you an on screen guide for each stance change.

  • @Alipes
    @Alipes Před 9 měsíci +151

    The Witness has what could be considered an even harder puzzle - "Hall of the Mountain King". It's more of a puzzle gauntlet - timed and randomized - so you can't just lookup a solution online to get through it.

    • @chriswest6988
      @chriswest6988 Před 9 měsíci +15

      I felt like that was pretty easy after the insane ordeal of getting down there via those light bridges.

    • @swandive46
      @swandive46 Před 9 měsíci +8

      Iirc without the patches installed, you could take a photo of the puzzles with your phone, suspend the game while you solve it, and go back to the game with no time-loss.

    • @raimarulightning
      @raimarulightning Před 9 měsíci +7

      But it importantly was possible to solve on your own, so by definition, it can't be on this list.

    • @electricspider2267
      @electricspider2267 Před 9 měsíci +1

      Great you got that song stuck in my head, so thank you for that... great tune tho ngl. I haven't played the game but im assuming that the song with the same name is played as bgm. It's a catchy one with a soft and sleepy start but then becomes more and more chaotic as it goes.

    • @EngiNerd1988
      @EngiNerd1988 Před 9 měsíci +2

      It gets a bit easier yet also a bit trickier for other reasons (namely memory) when you find out that the fourth puzzle in the challenge (the one on the table with two dots) is the path through the wall maze and the two dots are where the ninth and tenth puzzles are.

  • @Puncherjoe1
    @Puncherjoe1 Před 9 měsíci +81

    Takeshi's challenge is an entire game of "I should have a guide ready"

    • @theresawilson1206
      @theresawilson1206 Před 9 měsíci +16

      One of the strangest things about Takeshi's Challenge is that the first guide released for the game had a big mistake.
      The solution for one of the hardest puzzles was wrong. The company had a second guide printed that gave the correct solution to the puzzle.
      You just can't make this stuff up.

    • @LET4M4RU
      @LET4M4RU Před 9 měsíci +7

      Takeshi's challenge was supposed to be a series of frustratingly dumb puzzles. I mean, when you finally finish it, spoiler alert, takeshi basically says "wow, you really are a loser, spending your time on stupid video games like this". The whole game is a troll

  • @Ashtarte3D
    @Ashtarte3D Před 9 měsíci +445

    The worst part of the Fez puzzle is even after the community brute forced and tried to reverse engineer how they were meant to get there many members asked creator Phil Fish how it was supposed to work. He proceeded to do the most Phil Fish thing he could, bitching that they cheated the solution and he'd rather die with the secret than reveal it to cheaters.
    I'm so glad Marcus Beer drove Fish to ragequit gaming.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +52

      I like the notion that it's a movie reference, but I have no idea HOW you'd derive it from the movie 2001.

    • @nashvontookus7451
      @nashvontookus7451 Před 9 měsíci +79

      Beer might be annoying, but at least he can take criticism without shutting down his entire career because of it lol

    • @SverigeHobbes
      @SverigeHobbes Před 9 měsíci +115

      I'll bet Fish realized that he screwed up designing that puzzle and used the "cheating" players as an excuse not to admit it.

    • @Lauren007E
      @Lauren007E Před 9 měsíci +15

      Bro acting as sadistic as Albert Fish with that one

    • @PikaLink91
      @PikaLink91 Před 9 měsíci +39

      That man is a piece of work. I mean I would be a little annoyed too if I was the creator, having put time into a puzzle the players just brute forced, but at the same time it would bolster my ego to know I was that smart.

  • @staceyb1873
    @staceyb1873 Před 9 měsíci +89

    I managed to do the mountain door puzzle with the help of my mum! I got the 9th page by accident simply because I was trying to find something hidden in the page, gave up for the day and quit. When I came back, spooky save file! Then noticed the line, mum figured I should record the directions and the rest is history!
    I still have the piece of paper with the huge pattern of the directions on it XD (we drew it all as one consecutive line)

    • @CptnBillHarris
      @CptnBillHarris Před 9 měsíci +24

      Jeez. That woman gave birth to you AND helped you figure that shit out. Hope you got her a hell of a mother's day present.😂

    • @octochan
      @octochan Před 9 měsíci +5

      I also kept the pages of notes and diagrams I drew on graph paper playing Tunic

  • @BenMarcWilliams
    @BenMarcWilliams Před 9 měsíci +120

    8:05 MacBeth is the _one_ Shakespearean play I'm familiar with, yet that hint somehow did _nothing_ for me. I can only imagine how "helpful" the other hints must be.
    Also, the difference between the difficulty of the Normal version of that puzzle and the Hard version of that puzzle is a gap wider than the grand canyon.

    • @nashvontookus7451
      @nashvontookus7451 Před 9 měsíci +9

      Yeah me too
      How is the central theme supposed to be lying and not wanton political assassination

    • @MarkDeSade100
      @MarkDeSade100 Před 9 měsíci +21

      I know Macbeth pretty well too, but I wouldn't have gotten it because that hint is just too vague. A lot of plays involve lies and deception.

    • @Tabbyclaw
      @Tabbyclaw Před 9 měsíci +6

      I was sure it was Othello.

    • @DarkRubberDucky
      @DarkRubberDucky Před 9 měsíci +3

      I could only figure out a couple of them, that being "playing at death.... she pierced a heart rent by sorrow" Romeo and Juliet. And "a game of turning white to black and black to white " Othello is a game with black and white pieces and the story of a black man and white woman.
      I always hated Shakespeare 😂

    • @Lilnaomi3
      @Lilnaomi3 Před 9 měsíci

      @@nashvontookus7451 Most likely the lying/deception is more relevant to the game and it's characters.
      this puzzle was still probably easier than solve for T for most people.

  • @laterkater4213
    @laterkater4213 Před 9 měsíci +174

    I have a mate who's favourite game as a kid was Myst and who ended up going to uni for game design. They somehow managed to solve the Tunic puzzle while streaming on twitch with no hints and I still have no idea how they cracked it, even with Mike explaining the solution to me. 🤣

    • @meathir4921
      @meathir4921 Před 9 měsíci +25

      The golden path ain't even the hardest puzzle in TUNIC.

    • @PikaLink91
      @PikaLink91 Před 9 měsíci +9

      Some people just have dumb luck.

    • @mikesannitti6042
      @mikesannitti6042 Před 8 měsíci +2

      Myst III actually was a bit easier. It came out a bit after Riven and I was very proud to beat it while avoiding online hints for the whole game... although it was collaborative with my uncle.

    • @nebulae5236
      @nebulae5236 Před 7 měsíci +1

      The mountain door was nice, but the tools they left for the player to solve the language blew my mind. Solved it without outside help over the course of 9 months and I can say with confidence that it was worth it - the secrets in this game go SO much deeper than just the mountain door

    • @ShadowEclipse777
      @ShadowEclipse777 Před 6 měsíci

      ​@nebulae5236 yeah I need to try to decipher it again. Sadly I needed a hint to unstuck my mind. Was too dead set on Tunic's language being like FEZ'S where 1 character = 1 Letter since the game reminded me of FEZ so much

  • @kevin_f
    @kevin_f Před 9 měsíci +42

    I loved Tunic, but there was no way I was figuring out that save file path. Thank you, walkthrough makers!

  • @christopherrimes2647
    @christopherrimes2647 Před 9 měsíci +13

    I just came home from a difficult funeral of a really close friend/boyfriend. His name was David; you guys are right, that is a good name ❤ Thanks for your videos as they bring me so much comfort.

    • @joecrow7666
      @joecrow7666 Před 7 měsíci +2

      No way, similar situation here.
      RIP Nikstlitselpmur, gone too soon.

  • @vt-1493
    @vt-1493 Před 9 měsíci +84

    Tunic's puzzles actually go even further. There are actually some puzzles in the game that you wouldn't even know are there unless you learn to read the "Incomprehensible Language" runes. Spoilers to follow for mostly "beyond critical path" content.
    On one of the last pages of the manual, in the memo section, is a series of hand-written notes meant to give you hints on how to translate it. First there is a picture of a Sword and the Fox, with the last rune of Fox and first rune of Sword circled to highlight that they are the same Rune. That is supposed to clue you in that the Runes are actually phonetic English; Fox ends and Sword begins with the same "s" sound. Next to that is a chart that shows a bunch of runes split between their outside portion and inside portion, which shows you all of the possible phonemes and clues you in that each Rune has two parts, a consonant (inside, which you know from "s") and vowel (outside). On a completely different page it notes that a circle at the bottom of the Rune flips its order; it's normally Consonant then Vowel, but for a word like "is" you need to do the vowel first.
    From there you need to guess at what a word is in order to fill in your translation chart, which lets you read more words, which lets you make more educated guesses for more phonemes. Eventually it is possible to translate all of the text in the game, which lets you read up on the game's story (or you could look up existing translations online).
    It also reveals a few more clues. For example, if you stand in water for 60 seconds then the first page (back of the front cover you got after the mountain door) will have more text on it, which translates to a poem, which you have to interpret into button inputs (ex. "Corrected" means Right), which needs to be entered in at a location specified by the adjacent picture. The reward is a golden statue.
    There's 12 of those golden statues. If you get half or more of them then a portal appears in their trophy room (which itself is easy to miss). That takes you to a new area which has runes show up if you start using the 'holy cross.' What you need to do here is use another clue in the manual to enter the 'golden path' (the mountain door puzzle)... backwards and as viewed from the inside. There is no indication that you did it right except the Runes can be read. The runes give you a URL for a website with a looping gif.
    I managed to get all of that on my own with only minor hints, mostly from spoilers. The rest I've only read about. If you inspect the website's source you will find it has an audio file available to download. It has music, but also some interesting sounds. People decided to turned it into a Spectrogram, and lo and behold there are Runes hidden in it! With corresponding series of rising or falling notes... Wait, you mean there is an audio version of the language encoding too?! Things like the Turrets talk?! ... Is this one of the reasons the game is named Tunic? Yup!

    • @thmsbarber
      @thmsbarber Před 9 měsíci +2

      yep the second language is referred to as tuneic

    • @HaIfaxa
      @HaIfaxa Před 8 měsíci +1

      I ain't reading all that but good for you

    • @DeathnoteBB
      @DeathnoteBB Před 7 měsíci +5

      I love puzzles but damn, even I have my limits

    • @nebulae5236
      @nebulae5236 Před 7 měsíci

      @@DeathnoteBBtrust me - for tunic, it’s worth the effort

    • @ericb3157
      @ericb3157 Před 7 měsíci +2

      this sort of reminds me of that "dinosaur language" in "Starfox Adventures".
      it's actually explained in the manual, as a simple letter-for-letter substitution.
      "kao"="the", for example.
      you don't really need to do anything with that in the game, IF you turn subtitles on...

  • @etxgaming2303
    @etxgaming2303 Před 9 měsíci +71

    Mike's ending statement to The Witness was classic.

  • @markhohenbrink5230
    @markhohenbrink5230 Před 9 měsíci +190

    The biggest bs part about the Frenzied flame ending for Elden Ring is that they mase this ridiculously convoluted way to cure it and they didnt bother adding anything for Mealina after you cure it.

    • @Murtaugh395
      @Murtaugh395 Před 9 měsíci +1

      I wonder what a Mealina is.... Could it possibly be Malenia?

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +14

      @@Murtaugh395 um no... Melina.
      Still though seems odd, but I guess doubling the number of endings would be a bit much.

    • @markhohenbrink5230
      @markhohenbrink5230 Před 9 měsíci +14

      @murtaughdram3950 my bad man there is like 4 different characters that start with M in Elden Ring with 2 of them being extremely close together; Melina Malenia

    • @azuredragoon2054
      @azuredragoon2054 Před 9 měsíci +13

      Simple. She has no reason to believe there is any means to cure it. And the only way TO cure it is to go beyond the point where you'll have denied her purpose by becoming the kindling she is supposed to be. Either she's mad at you for denying her purpose, or she believes you've succumbed to madness and are not worthy for her assistance.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +13

      @@azuredragoon2054 It'd be interesting though to see her redefine her purpose in life though.

  • @alamand4769
    @alamand4769 Před 9 měsíci +38

    Immediately thought of west of loathing's military cemetery puzzles, it starts out with fairly straightforward morse code before getting more and more complicated until near the end you're expected to see random times and realize you need to convert them into naval semaphore flag codes. Even more evil it gives you a reward soon after that step that a reasonable player might think meant they had solved it, but there's still a couple steps to go until you get the final reward.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +3

      that does sound fun. does it at least have the decency to teach you Semaphore?

  • @Wolfiyeethegranddukecerberus17
    @Wolfiyeethegranddukecerberus17 Před 9 měsíci +56

    I'm realizing the second code for the Black Monolith puzzle was probably an obscure reference to something in 2001: A Space Odyssey

    • @EngiNerd1988
      @EngiNerd1988 Před 9 měsíci +4

      Given that one of the other red cube puzzles is a riddle that results in the name of an obscure angel from Kabbalah, you're probably right.

    • @hugofontes5708
      @hugofontes5708 Před 9 měsíci +7

      ​@@EngiNerd1988this made me even more annoyed at "references are not puzzles"

    • @ShadowEclipse777
      @ShadowEclipse777 Před 6 měsíci

      ​​@@EngiNerd1988 be me who didn't rotate the letters when deciphering the language so my key was all wrong and also couldn't comprehend what the fuck "the first half of my name is what it is" was supposed to mean

  • @katfromthekong414
    @katfromthekong414 Před 9 měsíci +27

    The rumpelstiltskin riddle was bonkers!! 😂😂

    • @lisah-p8474
      @lisah-p8474 Před 9 měsíci +8

      The fact that the devs misspelled the name!!! I would have punted my keyboard out the window in frustration.

    • @JohnCliver
      @JohnCliver Před 9 měsíci +3

      Games were brutal if you failed to learn something or interpret some info right back then. I think it was Kings quest V that I had to replay (maybe more than once) after not knowing I was supposed to grab something from a nest and then needing that item much later.
      Wow, the memory/pain of it really sticks with you. This is probably why I’m such a thorough explorer in modern games.

    • @katfromthekong414
      @katfromthekong414 Před 9 měsíci +2

      @@JohnCliver I was born in 81 so I remember how games were back then (aka a pain in the behind), but no one can reasonably be expected to solve the rumpelstiltskin riddle in 3 tries. Bonkers 😆

    • @JohnCliver
      @JohnCliver Před 9 měsíci +2

      @@katfromthekong414 your only hope must be that one of your school friends bought a strategy guide.

    • @katfromthekong414
      @katfromthekong414 Před 9 měsíci +1

      @@JohnCliver hahaha those existed?

  • @Cuiasodo
    @Cuiasodo Před 9 měsíci +21

    I audibly groaned in frustration when the marble puzzle from Riven came up. I spent SO LONG going through that 3D pin map, writing down coordinates, only to be off by like two spaces and have to look up the solution. Which, back then, required one of those Prima Official Strategy guides.

  • @claratalbot7613
    @claratalbot7613 Před 9 měsíci +91

    What about getting those stars in The Talos Principle? Not only do u have to do things like connecting lasor beams that are in complete different puzzle areas, but for some of them it requires u to literally break the puzzles by taking stuff out of the areas they're supposed to be in just so u can then take them to a completely different area to use them to get a star. Why do we want to collect the stars? So we can solve another puzzle to get a secret ending

    • @DavidWeinehall
      @DavidWeinehall Před 9 měsíci +6

      I loved that game. Some of the puzzles in the DLC were just brutal though.

    • @SquintyGears
      @SquintyGears Před 9 měsíci +9

      I didn't 100% it but those moments came pretty naturally to me because it doesn't really say you can do that so i would very often try and solve the puzzles the "wrong" way. In a "I can see what you want me to do but I'm going to try my way" kind of deal.
      And i was fresh off of watching portal sperdruns where every rule is broken 😳

    • @chriswest6988
      @chriswest6988 Před 9 měsíci +2

      I figured out some of those, but nowhere close to all of them, and I didn't even get through every normal puzzle. I actually thought it did a pretty good job by having some stars visible in non-puzzle areas, some being just obviously impossible with the tools you are"supposed to have" in an area etc. They're still really hard, but there are some pretty clear bread crumbs that you need to completely change how you thought about the game as a series of distinct puzzle areas to get them.

    • @claratalbot7613
      @claratalbot7613 Před 9 měsíci +1

      I did find a few of them randomly while trying to solve the puzzles, but some were just so out of the way I had no idea how I was supposed to ever get them on my own

    • @punkdigerati
      @punkdigerati Před 9 měsíci +2

      I would absolutely play a Talos Principle 2, with even more convoluted stars.

  • @dragour8723
    @dragour8723 Před 9 měsíci +49

    In Morrowind there is a unique weapon called Eltonband, it's a powerful katana which is upgraded from Goldbrand.. but the process is simply impossible to do without a guide

    • @MarkDeSade100
      @MarkDeSade100 Před 9 měsíci +2

      I remember getting Eltonbrand and thinking it was a silly name for the strongest sword in the game. Can't even remember how I got it, Morrowind was a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure I did use a guide. 😅

    • @WorldsUnhealthiestFitPerson
      @WorldsUnhealthiestFitPerson Před 9 měsíci +9

      Well, it's a dev item, really, because someone working there went to Duke, so thus the name and the weirdness.

  • @SimuLord
    @SimuLord Před 9 měsíci +26

    I played those old Sierra adventure games way back in the day and I think the solution to those puzzles was to get one of those Romulan brain scanners from Star Trek and attach it to Roberta Williams' head.

    • @theresawilson1206
      @theresawilson1206 Před 9 měsíci +2

      That sounds about right.
      Roberta's "moon logic" for puzzle solutions is still confusing for me even now.

  • @empurress77
    @empurress77 Před 9 měsíci +53

    Shadow of the Colossus has a mountain door that took a decade or so for players to even figure out it was really solvable.

    • @hugofontes5708
      @hugofontes5708 Před 9 měsíci +3

      Wasn't that just added to the remaster?

    • @empurress77
      @empurress77 Před 9 měsíci

      @@hugofontes5708 Not sure about the remaster even being a thing.
      I would hope it's in the remaster. It's a great secret quest.

    • @hugofontes5708
      @hugofontes5708 Před 9 měsíci +6

      @@empurress77 I just double checked, this door secret quest is not in the original release for PS2, it's new

    • @empurress77
      @empurress77 Před 9 měsíci

      Interesting. May i ask the source? @@hugofontes5708

  • @emilydefrances5981
    @emilydefrances5981 Před 9 měsíci +53

    Me and my English major friends actually did solve the Hard Mode Silent Hill Shakespeare puzzle- or we did up until the math part! Then my other friend- a Theoretical Math nerd watched us struggling over our collection of Shakespeare books and was like “it’s just simple math you dorks”. So shout out to my math friend.

  • @FaTerokiMenra
    @FaTerokiMenra Před 9 měsíci +54

    Mike was framed!

    • @Nix_Abyss
      @Nix_Abyss Před 9 měsíci +1

      We all know it was Andy 😂

    • @tylermurray2191
      @tylermurray2191 Před 9 měsíci +4

      Well, to be fair, Andy was paying a good amount for the frame job. How could I say no to that.

  • @cae2212
    @cae2212 Před 9 měsíci +20

    Now I wonder if getting a goat to head bump the troll of that bridge is also supposed to be solved through a fairytale. I do remember reading a fairytale to my cousin where three goats tried to cross a troll infested bridge. The first two goats just cross by telling the troll to not eat them since the third goat is bigger and a better snack than they could ever be. The third goat is strong enough to just run the troll over.

    • @BenMarcWilliams
      @BenMarcWilliams Před 9 měsíci +8

      Yeah, the fairy tale's called the Billy Goats Gruff.

    • @joepersch6779
      @joepersch6779 Před 9 měsíci

      Funnily enough, you could also pay the troll with diamonds you find, but I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be used for something else

  • @caratownsend1166
    @caratownsend1166 Před 9 měsíci +62

    I'd already stumbled upon that weird save file in Tunic before getting to the final puzzle, which helped. Took me several attempts to enter the code correctly, though 😅
    The maddest puzzle in Tunic is actually the fact that the language is translatable, and that someone did translate it from first principles! It's a phonetic version of English based on the lines in the runes!

    • @TheLurkingWriter
      @TheLurkingWriter Před 9 měsíci +15

      I spent four hours working out how to translate the language whilst watching someone stream the game. The part that acted like a Rosetta stone for me was the Compass directions on the Beach map page of the manual. After the stream ended, and I'd translated roughly 10 or so of the pages, I found out people had already translated the entire manual(!!!) 🦊🤣

    • @codebracker
      @codebracker Před 9 měsíci +10

      There's an even madder puzzle, involving a second hidden language that's hidden in the music of the game

    • @BikoFactory
      @BikoFactory Před 9 měsíci +3

      Yeah I had to give up on that one secret trophy where you need to translate a sentence. When I realized it's not even just a cypher I couldn't be bothered anymore.

  • @eddythefool
    @eddythefool Před 9 měsíci +29

    I messed up the needle quest when Millicent fell to her death after we barely managed to kill the invaders. I was going for the chaos ending anyways, but I still wanted the option to back out open.

  • @rocketlanterns
    @rocketlanterns Před 9 měsíci +9

    Tunic's golden path is the easy one, the real challenge is the glyph tower ARG, which not only requires actually learning the language of the game, but also solving a bunch of cryptic riddles, all of which is to find a rosetta stone that teaches you how to _speak_ the game's language, I love it so much.

    • @nebulae5236
      @nebulae5236 Před 7 měsíci +1

      Right??? The fact that the game extends beyond the scope of the game, introducing a second, hidden language on top of the first one, and realizing that it was so perfectly integrated into so many aspects of the base game blew my mind

  • @rashkavar
    @rashkavar Před 3 měsíci +3

    I adore Riven as a game, it's such a wonderful environment and the puzzle elements are blended into it so well, it actually feels like it could be a real place. Except, y'know, that the water floats when heated and there's linking books to teleport you around and so on.
    The Fire Marble puzzle is definitely a challenge, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as what the video makes it out to be. For one, by the time you're solving this puzzle, you've been working up to things and are very used to taking notes by now. The island shapes show up on a number of diagrams, usually split apart as the islands are rather than meshed into a single large grid as we see here. This is far from the first time we see them, and there is even an island that allows an in depth analysis of each island's topography by selecting an island (deliniated in the grid by the darker lines), and a specific sector of that island (each of the 25 5x5 squares that the islands are blocked out as). Similarly, the colour symbols are presented to us as colours, and are presented at several prior points allowing their identification.
    In short, the Marble puzzle isn't the marble puzzle, it's the culmination of several distinct and more abstract puzzles in the game, such as:
    -How are numbers written?
    -What do these colour symbols mean?
    -What are these sets of square grids that show up on several places?
    -What does this giant dome structure try to do?
    -Where are the smaller domes found on each island?
    -And then finally: how do I use all of the above to gain access to Ghen's lab on the 233rd Age? (The marble grid puzzle is a big part of this step.)
    That said, I can certainly see the perspective of the Marble Puzzle being a major thing with an extremely convoluted answer. It's very possible to find your way to that area quite early on in your explorations, and if you're a mission focused player, you might latch onto solving that as your mission way before it's actually reasonable to set that as an immediate goal rather than a long term aspiration.

  • @xarenanotmyrealname4134
    @xarenanotmyrealname4134 Před 9 měsíci +15

    My mom is a huge Myst fan and the puzzle that infuriated her was the one where you needed to put musical notes in a certain order but the only way to know what that order was is from the previous puzzles which are hard on their own Myst is the only game where my mom has a whole notebook dedicated to Myst notes.

    • @typacsk
      @typacsk Před 3 měsíci +1

      I had to count the notes one by one as I was dragging the sliders in that puzzle, because I don't have perfect pitch >_

  • @arellajardin8188
    @arellajardin8188 Před 9 měsíci +55

    I did solve the Riven marble puzzle those many years ago, back before the internet was commonplace. And it's slightly harder than described here. The grid actually doesn't show the shapes of the islands. Instead, you have to find a 3d map of the islands and figure out how they match the grid. And one of the domes on the map isn't shown, you have to correlate its location by traveling to where it's hidden and using landmarks on the map.
    Compared to some of the others on this list, the Riven puzzle isn't nearly as hard. It doesn't require out of game knowledge, or calculations or anything. All the clues are laid out plainly. They're just spread out all over the entire game.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +6

      yeah the real trick is figuring out the in-game logic.

    • @E-L337
      @E-L337 Před 9 měsíci +6

      I recently played through some of the Myst games, and for the marble puzzle, I literally had to bust out graphing paper - something that feels was a lot more common to have in your house back in the day.
      Worse than that though was actually one of the early puzzles in Myst 3. It's actually on the main hub island! Where you had to look through a lens and line it up with an object just perfectly by panning, zooming, and tilting it at just the right angle. That sounds easy, but that was just so you could make note of the position of the little dots surrounding the lens, which you needed to use to get a pattern of multiple of these, to unlock the NEXT area for you to go... by SETTING THE DOTS IN THE CORRECT POSITIONS ON THE TRACK. And if that wasn't enough, you also needed to divine which track which symbol needed to go.
      I was only able to solve it by realizing the devs intended for you to take a sheet of paper and overlay it on the screen, so you could get everything lined up perfectly.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci

      @@E-L337 Wait... like... ONION PAPER?!?!

    • @arellajardin8188
      @arellajardin8188 Před 9 měsíci +3

      @E-L337 I hope you're enjoying the series, I loved it in its time. Even read the books. If you make it to Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, then I wish you luck. It was originally intended for multi-player, and the solutions to be discovered collaboratively. They a genuinely frustrating to solo. No shame having Google at the ready. 4 and 5 of the mainline series are good, though.

    • @AlexSamaras
      @AlexSamaras Před 9 měsíci +3

      @@E-L337 Back in the day, the original MYST CD-ROM came with a notebook and the suggestion to take notes while playing. I carried that same notebook into Riven and still have it now. Indeed, all of the clues are there in the game, you just have to note things down and possibly sketch or draw diagrams and eventually you see the connections between the clues and piece it all together.
      .
      It was an amazing feeling back in the day!

  • @dsbanimations2593
    @dsbanimations2593 Před 9 měsíci +12

    What about the infamous babble fish quest from the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy text based game? They gave out a t-shirt if you actually figure it out

    • @joma185
      @joma185 Před 9 měsíci +6

      Can we assume you never got to the part where Arthur Dent had to hold 'tea' and 'no tea' at the same time? I'm still stuck on that one.

    • @mindwarp42
      @mindwarp42 Před 9 měsíci

      The old Invisiclues game guides, where the guide was in invisible ink, are the only way I finished Infocom games as a kid. 😅 HHGTTG in particular, while sparking a love in all versions of the story in all media in me as a kid, really needed the guide to get past puzzles like the above as the fact that no two versions of the story have ever completely matched means that even if you read the books/watched the TV show/listened to the radio shows meant that you had no help solving stuff like the tea/no tea puzzle. Thanks, Douglas N. Adams! 😅

  • @Lia-A-Eastwood
    @Lia-A-Eastwood Před 8 měsíci +3

    RIVEN was my entry into the Myst universe. I played it in 1998 (at a time where walkthroughs weren't a Thing at all). It took me 5 weeks to solve the whole game. And it was brilliant!
    Patience is virtue.
    I still have the written and painted notes in my puzzle book.

  • @DeuxLeftHands
    @DeuxLeftHands Před 9 měsíci +25

    Mike, I believe I got the page 9 trick by accident, no idea you were supposed to be on the manual page before quitting.
    But the satisfaction to compete without a guide was indeed worth it.

    • @ArceusDX
      @ArceusDX Před 9 měsíci +2

      I never even did the page 9 trick, I had no clue about it, still somehow managed to map out the route.

    • @hugofontes5708
      @hugofontes5708 Před 9 měsíci +2

      Same, I noticed the game was pointing at something there, quit to look, left for life stuff and when I came back to look again it was there lol
      But the pages with golden square marking lines of different colors as part of the golden path completely threw me off

  • @jolantru3085
    @jolantru3085 Před 7 měsíci +2

    19:21
    "'Witness' that, fothermucker."
    Absolutely cracked up.
    Like "spat out my tea" levels of cracked up.

  • @TrimutiusToo
    @TrimutiusToo Před 9 měsíci +17

    This reminds me of those puzzles that some dev hidden in Hearthstone... They literally needed to be solved by whole community and some od them are just impossible to solve solo because the maze one from second batch would literally require 20+ accounts to figure it out solo because it is impossible to figure out outer shell od puzzle unless you know other starting locations and your account get locked into starting location and it cannot be changed
    And even if you do know the solution from walkthrough which is required that puzzle still takes over 2 hours to complete and it is easy to make a small mistake one our in and have to start over

    • @roguebanshee
      @roguebanshee Před 9 měsíci

      Those puzzles were what my mind went to as well.

  • @onlysmiles4949
    @onlysmiles4949 Před 9 měsíci +33

    Solving the mountain door puzzle in Tunic on my own is probably one of the proudest achievements I've done in any game

    • @Rusty84CV
      @Rusty84CV Před 9 měsíci +2

      You probably looked up the solution

    • @codebracker
      @codebracker Před 9 měsíci +3

      @@Rusty84CV I actually solved the whole thing myself
      Tho after that I still looked it up because i got one line wrong and didn't want to go check every page again to be sure

    • @shawntraub7249
      @shawntraub7249 Před 8 měsíci

      @@codebracker Out of curiosity, was the one line the one in the top right square where you have to press right twice?

    • @codebracker
      @codebracker Před 8 měsíci +1

      @@shawntraub7249 actually i was missing like 3 bisecting lines

    • @BigJasonMc
      @BigJasonMc Před 7 měsíci

      Suuure buddy.

  • @cpljimmyneutron
    @cpljimmyneutron Před 9 měsíci +4

    Ok, AC Origins has a puzzle involving Final Fantasy (totally not a joke). The game gives you absolutely no way to solve the puzzle, which involves using arrows on a giant sundial at certain times of day, that you must actually wait, using the time skip feature goes too far and fails...
    But, the mission (A Gift From The Gods) is not always available as it is only active during crossover events, apparently. I believe it is currently available, I stumbled upon it during my first playthrough.
    Also, the rewards are really good gear from Final Fantasy.

  • @zombiedoe3404
    @zombiedoe3404 Před 9 měsíci +7

    Here's another: the artifact ending from Signalis. It requires going to three specific rooms and tuning your radio to a specific frequency, then interacting with an unmarked object in each to get a set of three keys, which you need to be holding when you complete the dial puzzle near the end of the game. Then, you need to use the keys on the safe, and enter a twenty digit key-code which was only shown when you first visited the room at the very start of the game.

    • @DavidCowie2022
      @DavidCowie2022 Před 9 měsíci +3

      You missed a couple of steps:
      1) Realise that the radio signals contain image data.
      2) Use third-party software to extract the images from recordings of the radio signals. To be clear: this is done outside of the game.
      3) Identify the resulting low-resolution images as locations in the game.
      Apart from *that*, great game, and the other puzzles are all reasonable.

    • @MrMe917
      @MrMe917 Před 7 měsíci

      And even after what the both of you said, you still have to understand what in the fuck the cutscene right after even means.
      Or the rest of the game, for what matters.

  • @Maus_Indahaus
    @Maus_Indahaus Před 9 měsíci +9

    There is the final puzzle in Dracula 3: The path of the dragon. Even with the guide I still have no idea how it was supposed to be solved. The guides only mention what to do, without explaining why, and it feels as if we were supposed to collect some additional pieces of info earlier but missed them.

  • @joshuaarnett762
    @joshuaarnett762 Před 9 měsíci +5

    From what I've heard you don't need to kill Placidusax to use the needle. So you know, a tiny bit easier.

    • @NeoHellPoet
      @NeoHellPoet Před 9 měsíci +1

      It's a really fun fight though. One of the top dragon fights in the series and it's both amazingly epic and visually unique.
      You go there to fight him, the pin is purely coincidental.

    • @joshuaarnett762
      @joshuaarnett762 Před 9 měsíci +1

      @@NeoHellPoet oh I agree, I was just pointing out that you technically don't need to fight him to use the needle to quell the flame, just need to enter his arena

  • @spheresong
    @spheresong Před 9 měsíci +7

    I really liked the riven marble puzzle. I took notes during the entire game and it was really rewarding to each time I hit a challenging puzzle and I could put together the solution from those notes.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +2

      Which is probably how it was meant to be played honestly. I remember a lot of GBC games where... I MADE a guide book while playing just to be able to remember where to go to do stuff.

    • @typacsk
      @typacsk Před 9 měsíci +1

      I think my favorite thing about Riven (apart from the visual and sound design, I mean, my GOD) was how the puzzles were integrated into the world of the game, and how they supported the overall plot.
      There was no "SO, Stranger! You've made your way into my secret la-bor-a-tree! BUT--can you solve this arbitrary challenge that I've put together for no reason, before time runs out on this elaborate deathtrap? Muhuhahahahahaaaaa!"

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +2

      @@typacsk Yeah the mark of a true puzzle game is that the WORLD is the puzzle. Puzzles aren't tacked on afterthoughts.

    • @taragnor
      @taragnor Před 9 měsíci +1

      Yeah, Riven was really well-done. It was hard, but fair.

  • @LoJo
    @LoJo Před 9 měsíci +3

    I love the nods to old Sierra games. They hold a special yet infuriating place in my heart. 😂

  • @macdjord
    @macdjord Před 9 měsíci +29

    The Riven firemarble puzzle was... difficult, but eminently solvable. You had all the information to get it right.

    • @Merlewhitefire
      @Merlewhitefire Před 9 měsíci +7

      Yeah, the marble puzzle was obtuse, but not impossible

    • @addison_v_ertisement1678
      @addison_v_ertisement1678 Před 9 měsíci +2

      How?

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci

      @@addison_v_ertisement1678 the game has an in-game map, and 5 of the 6 locations are on it. you have to go to the sixth manually and then annotate that. Then just change map formats to the grid system for the puzzle. While only 5 locations are visitable to do the marble color mini-game having 5 solved right means the sixth is just whatever is leftover. the real difficulty is that the marble puzzle... in and of itself... doesn't actually tell you how to do that.

    • @jeffreywells1832
      @jeffreywells1832 Před 9 měsíci

      ⁠@@addison_v_ertisement1678 It's been a few years, but...on each island there was one golden zoetrope dome. each zoetrope dome corresponded to a specific symbol when you looked at it through its corresponding viewer. Each *symbol* could then be linked to a certain color based in the underwater room where the giant whale-shark think could be directed around. This allowed you, via a two-step process, to associate a color to each of the islands. Put the marble of that color at the exact spot on the world map where the dome was IRL for each island, and presto, power plant is on. My spouse and I solved this one without hints back in the 90s, and it was a rough one, but not pointlessly obtuse.

    • @UTSNicole
      @UTSNicole Před 9 měsíci +5

      Yep, I solved it. I took lots of notes, but I got there.

  • @cedriclothritz7281
    @cedriclothritz7281 Před 9 měsíci +4

    3:05 I actually did figure this one out by myself. Having played Undertale and Doki Doki Literature Club, I just assumed there'd be something waiting for me in the loading screen, but I think the save file was already there without me having to press 'cancel'.
    I did have to look up what the the golden grid meant, though.

  • @StretchDude
    @StretchDude Před 9 měsíci +5

    All the directional input puzzles in Tunic are insane. How anyone was supposed to figure out the one hidden in the ROTATING reflection of a pool of water on the wall of a cave is beyond my comprehension.

    • @codebracker
      @codebracker Před 9 měsíci

      good thing you don't have to find all the fairies to get the good ending
      the one with the broken gold monolith was also ridiculous

    • @hugofontes5708
      @hugofontes5708 Před 9 měsíci

      Somehow I did, thanks to symmetries. But the ones with tones were just impossible for me

    • @shawntraub7249
      @shawntraub7249 Před 8 měsíci

      Once you know about the the directional puzzles, a lot of things become more obvious. If a room is seemingly empty, there is certainly a puzzle there. Once you notice the lines, you'll know what the puzzle is. I ended up writing the pattern down on a small piece of paper, slowly rotating it along with the screen over many cycles.

  • @Frito5123
    @Frito5123 Před 9 měsíci +11

    Even crazier about Tunic page 9 is that the game (at least the Steam version) would auto-load your save file with the default Continue option on the title screen. I did actually figure out the page after being stumped for ages, just based on the save/load being the only gold on the page, and realizing that I couldn't remember even seeing the file screen.

  • @Icam_here
    @Icam_here Před 9 měsíci +4

    there is a lot more effort then i would be willing to do to solve a lot of these, well done to all those that figured these out, especially that Fez one

  • @Merlewhitefire
    @Merlewhitefire Před 9 měsíci +5

    The marble puzzle isn't impossible at all. It's obtuse, but it's not even the most tedious puzzle in Riven (That honor goes to "Working out the entire new base five number system from scratch" IMO)

    • @shawntraub7249
      @shawntraub7249 Před 9 měsíci

      The numbering system was doable once you found the classroom. There was a small game on a desk where you would pull a level and a symbol would come up. Then a figure would drop down a number of times closer to a shark. The number of times it dropped was the number in their system. I think this taught you 1-9, and you had to figure out 10-25 on your own. Since they use a base 5 system that maxed out at 25, you were able to see the pattern.

    • @Merlewhitefire
      @Merlewhitefire Před 9 měsíci

      @@shawntraub7249 I remember the game, but it felt so tedious and unintuitive working out the rest of the number system.

  • @torstenk.9445
    @torstenk.9445 Před 9 měsíci +5

    The Clock-Puzzle from Control's AWE-DLC. At one point you encounter a clock in an empty room. To solve the puzzle and proceed you need to listen to the song "Take Control" by The Old Gods of Asgard (aka Poets of the Fall) that is playing through the Ashtrey Maze. In here there are three sequences that are playing backwards. When you play the song in reverse you get the instruction how the clock has to be set to reach a hidden area.

    • @medichampion328
      @medichampion328 Před 9 měsíci +2

      Fortunately, there is a radio near the beginning of that section also playing "Take Control", which hints at its usage

    • @creepypastakingthedragones3679
      @creepypastakingthedragones3679 Před 9 měsíci

      You gotta admit though take control playing though the ashtray maze fight section was awesome though

  • @elvisthao9161
    @elvisthao9161 Před 9 měsíci +2

    Jokes on you, I never found out you had to take off all your clothes to meet the Three Fingers, so I never had a problem with them in my first playthrough. So, uh, checkmate, obtuse needle hunting.

  • @scottishrob13
    @scottishrob13 Před 9 měsíci +6

    I actually didn't mind that ship door puzzle. The only thing I didn't catch on to immediately was that the sound mechanic was back. Once I knew, it was pretty obvious what the sounds were indicating, and what sounds to listen for. I remember that game having even harder puzzles than that, especially some of the environmental ones. The rest of the puzzles on this list though... yeah, no thanks haha

    • @ShadowEclipse777
      @ShadowEclipse777 Před 6 měsíci

      Yeah some of the environmental obelisk puzzles are evil

  • @Artaimus
    @Artaimus Před 9 měsíci +31

    The Riven one was actually quite easy for me I found. Mainly since you were able to figure out the correct colors for four of them, which left you with two left over and an easy job to switch them out once you used the map room to locate the dome.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +6

      yeah, most of the hilariously numerous "wrong answers" are because you don't know what coords to place marbles in. even if you randomly place marbles, having the right coords means it's only * does math * 720 combinations, and those can be cut down pretty easy if you do the other side puzzles.

    • @OrangeDog20
      @OrangeDog20 Před 9 měsíci

      You have to work out what the whole thing is for first.

  • @Helios9826
    @Helios9826 Před 9 měsíci +3

    So basically, the way to solve Tunic's hardest puzzle is to rage quit?

  • @williamst.romain7393
    @williamst.romain7393 Před 9 měsíci +2

    One of the most infamous puzzles is in the text only game from the 80s: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galay. It near the start. The babel fish puzzle. I found the answer online decades after I played it.

  • @masonr1666
    @masonr1666 Před 9 měsíci +4

    The silent hill series (1 to 3) were always about the puzzles for me. My favorite will always be the piano 🎹 puzzle.
    The puzzle gives you everything you need to solve it, but requires you to think logically in order to solve it. This is why it is my favorite puzzle.

    • @Scribblerjohnny
      @Scribblerjohnny Před 9 měsíci

      I also love that puzzle! And the clue poem!

    • @CassiusZedaker-pr7kc
      @CassiusZedaker-pr7kc Před 9 měsíci

      I failed and rage quit SH1 at the piano puzzle.

    • @CelesteBertin
      @CelesteBertin Před 9 měsíci

      Came here to say this! Solved it by pressing the keys in different orders until it worked.

  • @kingspilly4381
    @kingspilly4381 Před 9 měsíci +4

    Cayne, the short game that takes place between the two Stasis games, has a puzzle that most players will almost certainly have to solve by just trying every item combination until something works. There is a room where the fuse box connected to a door has blown a fuse and needs a replacement. What you have to do is cover an ID card you picked up earlier with protein powder, then press it against the fuse box to get an outline of the exact shape of the fuse onto it, so you can then cut the card into the shape of the fuse. It doesn't help that the narration is inconsistent about whether the card is made of metal (which could theoretically work) or plastic (which definitely wouldn't).

  • @samuxan
    @samuxan Před 9 měsíci +4

    "you can easily blunder into de 2 fingers..." well I finished the game twice, got that needle, kill the 2 bosses needed and explore the area the fingers are without finding the place they're hidden. The drops needed to reach that are so impossible that I had to look that up, I just assumed it was a bottomless pit. Getting the bad ending was the hardest part of getting that platinum trophy

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +2

      also it's debatable as to if it IS a bad ending at all. Seemingly the true good ending is the moon one, the regular ending is apparently the mostly bad one, and the dung one is the worst.

  • @angelxe1
    @angelxe1 Před 9 měsíci +3

    In more recent games: Tormented Souls has the best / hardest puzzles I've encountered in survival horror. The pharmacy door drove me nuts - husband had to help me figure it out - while the Infinite Room Puzzle was so much fun.

  • @PatrickSon14
    @PatrickSon14 Před 9 měsíci +37

    I did the Mountain Door puzzle in Tunic without a guide, and it was one of the most rewarding puzzles I've ever done

    • @Christopher-md7tf
      @Christopher-md7tf Před 9 měsíci +13

      I understood the general principle of the puzzle fairly quickly, but those save file shenanigans completely eluded me. No idea how you're supposed to know to cancel out and then go back into the load screen again.
      That being said, I don't even think The Golden Path is the hardest puzzle in the game lol. Anybody who manages to find all the secrets without a guide has my utmost respect.

    • @PatrickSon14
      @PatrickSon14 Před 9 měsíci +5

      @@Christopher-md7tf yeah, I used a guide for the remaining secrets and that weird optional tower puzzle. Those were way harder than the Mountain Door

    • @cearnicus
      @cearnicus Před 9 měsíci +2

      @@Christopher-md7tf I'm not sure you need to hit cancel for it. Or perhaps I hit it by accident at some point. I think I noticed the extra savegame well before I even started with the mountain puzzle; but since I didn't have the context to know its importance, I never loaded it.

    • @cjlister8508
      @cjlister8508 Před 9 měsíci

      Yeah the mountain door made perfect sense. I can't believe that it's on this list.

    • @greedyProphet
      @greedyProphet Před 9 měsíci +1

      Same. It took a few attempts, but the two days of playing and brainstorming at work were so fun. Also, for one of the crystals I was describing how hard and nebulous the puzzles were including one I couldn't solve, and in describing it I figured it out. Right up there with The Outer Wilds for best puzzle experiences ever.

  • @AlexSamaras
    @AlexSamaras Před 9 měsíci +9

    Heh. I played Riven way back in the day, well before there were walk-throughs to look up. That puzzle wasn't so bad. You could work out the grid locations of the domes using the terrain generator device on one of the islands. Then you got 4 of the 5 colors as mentioned, and so the final one (which turned out to be violet, based on my old MYST/Riven notebook that, like all totally normal people, I still have) you could get by trial and error.
    .
    Those games were brilliant. The orignal MYST CD-ROM came with a notebook and the manual encouraged players to take notes and be observant. I carried that same notebook and attitude into Riven and was able to work out the puzzles from the clues given in the game by making notes, sketches, etc of anything that seemed important and then figuring out the connections. It was so much fun, and I don't think people get that kind of experience any more in these days of it being so easy to just google if you get stuck.

    • @abydosianchulac2
      @abydosianchulac2 Před 9 měsíci

      Yeah, the fact that you *could* get all the answers if you wanted them but it involved spending $19.99 USD on the official guide (or at least $5.99 USD on the unofficial guide from the same publisher, weirdly) really made you consider if spoiling things was worth it. And yes I still have those both at hand like a totally normal person.

  • @finnover9781
    @finnover9781 Před 9 měsíci +6

    There's a puzzle hidden somewhere in this video, but I can't work it out.

  • @lukekingsland5851
    @lukekingsland5851 Před 9 měsíci +2

    You could make a whole video on Discworld puzzles, to be honest.

  • @Wordgoblin
    @Wordgoblin Před 9 měsíci +2

    The real puzzle is why he wrote all of those instructions about Elden Ring on a DnD 5e character sheet.
    You thought I wouldn't see it, didn't you?

  • @sirflimflam
    @sirflimflam Před 9 měsíci +8

    The hardest puzzle in Tunic rewarding the most obvious page of the game, that teaches you literally nothing by being the title of the booklet... That is brilliant. Not gonna lie.

    • @merepseu
      @merepseu Před 9 měsíci +4

      When you've beaten the toughest thing the game can you throw at you, there's no point in rewarding you with something useful - it'll just make easier stuff even easier still.

    • @marhawkman303
      @marhawkman303 Před 9 měsíci +1

      @@merepseu yeah like in FF5 beating Omega 2. The team setup I used for that OWNED the real final boss of the game so hard it wasn't funny. Why bother giving me anything other than a participation trophy?

    • @warailawildrunner5300
      @warailawildrunner5300 Před 9 měsíci +2

      @@marhawkman303 Or the irony of doing all the hardest content in the game, to be rewarded with one of the best weapons in the game, which is pretty useless as you've just beaten all the hardest content before getting it. (FF12)

    • @MarkDeSade100
      @MarkDeSade100 Před 9 měsíci +1

      @@warailawildrunner5300 A lot of RPGs are guilty of that. "Congratulations, you beat the optional superboss who is way harder than the final boss of the main story! Now you can finally use the best weapon in the game!" Player: "What am I supposed to use it on?"

    • @Riiick3
      @Riiick3 Před 9 měsíci

      Its not true though, its how you get the alternate ending

  • @chrisjones5949
    @chrisjones5949 Před 9 měsíci +9

    Well, the front cover isn't your ONLY reward for the Tunic door puzzle. It's also the only way to unlock the alternate ending.
    Also, I figured out all of it myself... EXCEPT page 9. But still, the feeling of "OHHHHH" when I initially figured out what the golden lines meant was super satisfying.

  • @ashketchum1624
    @ashketchum1624 Před 9 měsíci +1

    Unrelated but that mustache from Andy is magnificent.

  • @littlefurnace
    @littlefurnace Před 9 měsíci +3

    I found the witness okay, but the problem with it is that the puzzles are all intuitive and add rules over time, so you have to solve them in order, but I didn't play for two weeks and forgot where I got to. The only way to remember was to replay the whole game an I am NOT doing all that again, no matter how nice it is to listen to Ashley Johnson read me poems.

  • @SolaScientia
    @SolaScientia Před 9 měsíci +3

    I'm honestly terrible at solving puzzles. I need a walk-through to play Legend of Zelda games, ffs. I'll probably finish Elden Ring at some point who knows when, but I already decided I wouldn't even try to get the Three Fingers because 1) I don't want the Frenzied Flame ending and 2) I'd heard just how aggravating it is to undo what you did to get a different ending. I had enough trouble making sure I didn't screw up with Siegward and Anri to make sure I kept Siegward alive for Yhorm and to make sure I kept Anri alive so I could get the Usurpation of Flame ending in DS3. Oh yeah, keeping Eileen alive and not angry in Bloodborne only to fight the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst as the "reward" for all that.

  • @NGMonocrom
    @NGMonocrom Před 9 měsíci +4

    Actually yes, Andy; Dave is a nice name indeed.
    Give you *1* guess what my name is.
    Congratulations! You've won me, giving this video a thumbs-up. Nicely done. 😇

    • @forestghost1186
      @forestghost1186 Před 9 měsíci

      Daves of the World Unite! And with our numbers we can create more Daves, sure they would call us mad? All we want to do is to create the perfect genetic Dave! Not for power, not for evil, but for good! They shall march out of our laboratory and sweep away every adversary, every creed, every nation, until the very planet is in the loving grip of the Pax Daveonica! 🌎

  • @DMBLaan
    @DMBLaan Před 9 měsíci +1

    I love that by misspelling his name, Sierra effectively made the puzzle unsolvable through normal means.

  • @HaphazardDisastard
    @HaphazardDisastard Před 6 měsíci +1

    16:59 That paper looks like a character sheet for a tabletop role-playing game.

  • @riksweeney
    @riksweeney Před 9 měsíci +6

    "You could easily blunder into the three fingers not really knowing what the consequences would be"
    Last time I got a door to open by taking off all my clothes I knew *exactly* what the consequences were going to be.

  • @Stratelier
    @Stratelier Před 9 měsíci +7

    In its defense, by the time you're likely to _attempt_ the Mountain Door Puzzle in Tunic, you're already approaching _The Witness_ level of metapuzzling (yes, one of the clues is legit provided by a _coffee stain_ in the manual; another is provided by _misaligned print colors_ in the manual; then there's the secret save file). The real issue isn't so much finding the Golden Path itself, but correctly inputting it because the password is 100 inputs long and if you mess up even once (e.g. misinterpreted a single vs. double press) it's on YOU to puzzle out what you did wrong where. (At this point, I resorted to a guide to compare how close my solution was -- I was off by just 2 inputs)

    • @Christopher-md7tf
      @Christopher-md7tf Před 9 měsíci +4

      Even if you have all the correct inputs, you need to be fast enough AND stand in the correct spot (that last one was an issue for me). And if your controller has a shitty D-Pad prone to false inputs like the Switch Pro controller, you can probably forget about it altogether lol.

    • @Stratelier
      @Stratelier Před 9 měsíci +4

      @@Christopher-md7tf At least the game has a "sequence editor" where you can type in the sequence and then make the game input it for you.

    • @Christopher-md7tf
      @Christopher-md7tf Před 9 měsíci +2

      @@Stratelier I didn't even know about that, has that been in the game since launch?

    • @Stratelier
      @Stratelier Před 9 měsíci

      @@Christopher-md7tf Maybe, but I did not play it at launch. I think it is under the "Accessibility" menu.

  • @DBurner9
    @DBurner9 Před 9 měsíci +2

    In tunic when I saw the wierd save file I loaded it up and saw the line, thinking nothing of it when I input the sacred cross... then I found page 22 this game unlocked a lot of my brain power!

  • @invaderhorizongreen8168
    @invaderhorizongreen8168 Před 9 měsíci +1

    Also in one of the kings quest games, you go to the wrong area in the desert and a scorpion will kill you, and according to the official guide book there are quite a few areas on the grid that will do just that.

  • @williamfalls
    @williamfalls Před 9 měsíci +3

    Imma be honest, I think I stumbled across all that in Elden Ring... But forgot to do the last step of removing the Frenzy Flame.

  • @kalin6149
    @kalin6149 Před 9 měsíci +6

    How about Manifold Garden? The trophy for completing the entire game without using a god block? It's literally so hard, and so mind blowing, that idk if anyone did it naturally.

    • @MurderWho
      @MurderWho Před 9 měsíci +1

      It feels a lot more difficult than it actually is. The game moreorless shows you exactly how it's possible in one moment in the late game, where you're travelling across a bridge over a corridor. An obvious door down that corridor reveals a passage back to the very beginning of the game.
      From there, you can recall a door that you never got through on your first playthrough that you now know requires holding a godblock.
      (Alternately, you can also find a hidden door beneath a stairway at the end of the game that would allow you to climb up somewhere while holding a block, and that's it's only possible purpose, and you end up asking yourself "what block would I even be holding . . .?". And the pathway up to that point has been hinting at a godblock in a particular orientation, but they all should be placed at that point. Working backwards on a maingame playthru, it's easy to figure out what your path must look like up until a point where it MUST involve a secret passage, and that solves a significant part of the no-godblock playthru)
      And then you just follow that path through that door. Everytime you come to a deadend you ask yourself "How can I open up more without placing a godblock?", and the game has already taught you how to think in the right way to find a solution. And you've seen enough secret passages your first playthru, usually from the wrong side, to start learning how to look . . . but especially because you find so many secret passages that dump you out in deadends, and the only possibility from there is either: there's a secret passage in this deadend, or I can smuggle a block to/from here. Eventually you get to the end. It's a much faster playthru than the main game, even though there's no good way to smuggle a particular block through a particular corridor to a particular hidden door that I know of, and you end up just doing an agility test :/
      And despite all that, I am still aware of back corridors I haven't found the entrance to yet.
      Both the main game and the no-godblock game are much, much easier if you start keeping a nodemap of what rooms lead to what rooms.

    • @kalin6149
      @kalin6149 Před 9 měsíci +1

      @@MurderWho I'll leave my response to this as simply as I can. I'm impressed you were able to write all that and still say it "feels more difficult than it actually is".
      Secondly, I'm impressed at your ability to simply recall those steps at all. Not gonna lie I used a guide to get that platinum and I'm man enough to acknowledge it. Good on you man, nice job!

  • @joshuaridgway3230
    @joshuaridgway3230 Před 9 měsíci +1

    Getting the last crystalized dragon in Tree Tops in Spyro the Dragon. No one under the age of 15 figured that convoluted series of supercharge jumps without the guide. I could only do it in the Reignited Trilogy because I remembered where I put my players guide from way back when.

  • @G00berella
    @G00berella Před 9 měsíci +1

    Just wanna say that I appreciate you always putting classic Sierra games on your lists. Usually because they're absolute bonkers with BS puzzles, but were imperative to my childhood.

  • @thetute59
    @thetute59 Před 9 měsíci +5

    Destiny puzzles are, at times, also insanely hard. I think there were also multiple that were only able to be solved by the community.

    • @frankwest5388
      @frankwest5388 Před 7 měsíci

      Did they ever find out what the last wish was?
      I saw a video a while on that weird place called wishing wall and I don’t remember if they got all of them

  • @Ashtarte3D
    @Ashtarte3D Před 9 měsíci +7

    If you find the Frenzied Flame you should have a pretty solid idea of what it means and what you're getting into by that point. Also it's definitely not the worst ending. Working for Dung Eater is 100% the worst possible ending. Plus I'd argue that getting the Order ending by doing Corhyn and Goldmask's various shenanigans is way more obtuse.

    • @DestinyCrafter
      @DestinyCrafter Před 9 měsíci +1

      Ash, are you aware that FF ending wipes out practically all life? 😅 DE ending just curses many, and that can be broken by a new Shattering.

  • @ComissarYarrick
    @ComissarYarrick Před 9 měsíci +1

    Of all games, DICE's Battlefield have some really stupidly elaborae puzzles, involving finding hidden *tiny* switches, translating morse code and dogtags.

  • @secondmemelord8859
    @secondmemelord8859 Před 9 měsíci +1

    La Mulana has a good amount of puzzles that could fit on this List. For Example in order to unlock the optional Hell Temple you have to do things like jumping into an random background object, sleep infront of an certain statue, going down an seemingly infinite series of lava filled rooms until you can break an hidden wall on the 20th screen and more. Also you can accidentially screw yourself and render the puzzle unsolvable, by talking to an npc at the wring time.

  • @TheSplunger
    @TheSplunger Před 9 měsíci +3

    Community puzzles are always fun. Reminded of old Destiny 2 stuff like the giant Corridors of time puzzle. Wasn't meant to be solvable solo, though. Giant maze where each person had like a 5 step path that was easy to follow on their own to finish it normally, including a piece of a giant map under the floor, together which made a like 50 step path

    • @ShadowEclipse777
      @ShadowEclipse777 Před 6 měsíci

      And all we got for it was the Bastion Kinetic Exotic Fusion Rifle 2 weeks early xwx

    • @ShadowEclipse777
      @ShadowEclipse777 Před 6 měsíci

      As least I was able to make an ungodly amount of Legendary Shards that basically carried me the last couple years as I started playing less and less

  • @natejgee
    @natejgee Před 9 měsíci +3

    How could you not have some of the latteral thinking exercies from the Discworld games?

  • @BadGirlsBeotchBlog
    @BadGirlsBeotchBlog Před 8 měsíci +1

    I remember Five Nights at Freddy's 3 had a series of cryptic puzzles that all had to be solved in order to get the secret "good" ending. I swear Scott Cawthon must've leaked those answers himself.

  • @lordofuzkulak8308
    @lordofuzkulak8308 Před 9 měsíci +1

    1:06 - you sure they’re not just a Link that’s stumbled into another dimension again; I mean, one turned into a wolf when he went into the Twilight Realm and another became a pink bunny when he went to the Dark World, so it would be in character for yet another to become a fox somewhere else. 🤷🏻‍♂️
    😜

  • @mchelpa
    @mchelpa Před 9 měsíci +8

    It’s not the _most_ difficult of gaming achievements, but I was amazingly happy to complete the original FF VII with no FAQ or guide.
    I missed a ton of side content of course, didn’t get Vincent or the best gear, but I did get Yuffie.
    Also… so… many… stairs…

  • @DavidRBrown7
    @DavidRBrown7 Před 9 měsíci +3

    Ah, Riven. That takes me back. Played all the Myst games when they first came out. They were literally the first PC games I ever played. I had no access to the internet and solving the problems would take hours. I remember solving the marble puzzle. I am pretty sure there was a way to solve the last marble but I cannot remember how I did it now. I remember the later games eg Exile and Revelation were much easier than the first two.

    • @cigoLxeL
      @cigoLxeL Před 9 měsíci

      I remember spending a good two hours on _Riven_ trying to figure out some puzzle that involved lighting and extinguishing several pilot lights, only to be rewarded for solving it by having a small bucket raise up and a colorful frog jump out of the bucket and vanish. That was when I traded the game in for something fun, and judging by what I now see the game puts you through later, I don't regret that choice in the slightest.

  • @kinjedl
    @kinjedl Před 8 měsíci +1

    Might and Magic II's final puzzle. With a 14 minute timer, and the clue "Preamble", you need to provide a text-based answer. You are given a block of encrypted text, which you need to figure out is the preamble to the US Declaration of Independence - except modified, so that instead of starting with "We the people of the United States", it starts with "We the people of Terra" (the world the game takes place on.) You then need to, using the English version of the preamble as a key, figure out that they want you to encrypt the word "preamble" using the same cypher, and provide that set of characters in order to beat the game.

  • @Arindilwen
    @Arindilwen Před 9 měsíci +1

    The FMV game "Temujin" had some really insane puzzles. Pretty sure the one to "make a cup of tea" involved zero steps typical to brewing a regular cup of tea. Never would have completed that game without online guides.