Anchorhead is too hard for me

Playing Game Hints
33

As some of y’all might have noticed, I finally went back and converted my rot13 Anchorhead Invisiclues to a clickable version here on the forum: Anchorhead (2018) Invisiclues Hints

I was struck by @adventuron’s point about puzzle dependency charts, so I tried making one for Anchorhead 2018.

  1. End Day 1
    1. Follow Michael
      1. Bring him the keys
  2. End Day 2
    1. Give hobo the amulet
      1. Find the curiosity shop
      2. Show hobo the skull
        1. Bring him the flask
        2. Enter the crypt
          1. Find/sweep the webs
            1. Enter the Storage Room (flashlight)
  3. End Day 3
    1. Escape Mill
      1. Enter Mill
        1. Row to mill key
          1. Give bear to Mrs. Greer
            1. Find Mrs. Greer (can be done on Day 2)
            2. Get to shanty town
              1. Play flute in Burial Mound
                1. Use password to enter Burial Mound
                  1. Use telescope
                    1. Open puzzle box (can be done on Day 2)
                      1. Open safe
                        1. Find safe
                        2. Use Michael’s laptop
                  2. Solve mural (can be done on Day 2)
                    1. Find mural
                    2. Find mural combination
                      1. Spy on Michael (or his library books)
            3. Escape Forest Lane/Church
              1. Find/Escape slaughterhouse
  4. Last Night
    1. Defeat Croseus
      1. Chase Michael
        1. Escape island
          1. Find/Bring needle
          2. Give flawed crystal
            1. Smash copy crystal (can be done on Day 2)
              1. Find copy crystal
            2. Enter lighthouse
              1. Get past William
                1. Find locket (can be done on Day 2)
                  1. Find attic key
                2. Get past mob
                  1. Escape asylum
                    1. Find your stuff
                      1. Escape jacket
                        1. Escape cell

Even without revealing the spoiler blur, you can visually see that this chart is, as Chris pointed out, almost completely linear. For most of the game, there is at most one thing that you can work on at any given time. There are just a handful of puzzles that can be worked on in parallel or out of sequence.

By contrast, look at the map of Anchorhead: it’s an enormous sprawling place. A map like this invites you to try to solve multiple puzzles at once. Did you get stuck trying to enter the real-estate office? Maybe you should try entering the Church or the Mill while you think about it.

This mismatch is a bad thing, IMO, because it means that the vast majority of Anchorhead’s map is irrelevant to the problem you’re solving right now. On Day 1, you simply can’t enter the Church or the Mill, at all. The result is a game where you can never develop trust that you’re working on a puzzle that can be solved right now. Why am I solving a puzzle with the hobo in the Vacant Lot on Day 2? Why him and not Mrs. Greer, or the orderly, or the telescope?

When it turns out that you can’t solve a particular puzzle on a particular day, (e.g. the telescope puzzle on Day 2,) you never say, “ah, of course, I should have known that this puzzle wasn’t ready yet, in hindsight,” but always “I had no way of knowing that this puzzle couldn’t be solved yet.” All of the puzzles look solvable, but only one or two of them are; there’s no fair way to know which ones are which, and that makes the game frustrating, even when you find out the right answer.

The moral I draw from this is that games with big maps should have wide, branchy puzzle dependency charts, or else should have a clear in-game guide telling you “you can solve puzzle X now. It may seem hard, but trust me, if you think about it, you’ll get it.”

And that’s what my Invisiclues are intended to provide. You’re not supposed to read them like a walkthrough, but maybe just read “How do I finish Day 2?” which tells you which puzzles need solving, but not how to solve them. (Of course, if you need that, too, the solutions are also available.)

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