Museum Madness – DOS / Macintosh (1994) [ Novotrade ]

You need to walk around the Museum of Natural History, interacting with the people in each exhibit to solve their problems and learn about all the different things one learns about in a museum. Are you ready to spend A Night At the Museum?

A virus has corrupted the place, which means you have a lot of fixing to do. You’ll be doing a lot of classic adventuring on top of all the learning, ‘use candle on chest’ and what-not. You’ll also find a number of fun logic puzzles and jigsaws just waiting for you.

I suspect this game is pretty accurate to the real Museum of Natural History. I remember when I was a kid, I picked up all sorts of free game CDs from various tourist attractions. I still have a copy of that interactive encyclopedia from the San Diego Zoo. It makes me wonder if these places still offer new games based on their establishment.

Wait, where was I? Oh right. Once you get past the boring basement intro (it’s short), prepare for a long haul of trivia. I never knew Louisiana was sold to Napolean by Spain. Now I do. There are several exhibits to work through. You’ll be learning about astronomy, rocket science, power plants, flying machines, history, and the birth of civilization.

It’s certainly a game directed towards children. It has a lot of stuff you might find in a Grade 5 handbook. Given the state of adult knowledge as compared to fifth graders (thanks to a certain TV show), I’d say this game is likely a handy refresher for many of us.

The Castle of Dr. Brain, The Island of Dr. Brain – DOS (1991,1992) [ Sierra ]

This is certainly an interesting take on the old Sierra Quest engine. The Dr. Brain puzzles actually get pretty ingenious. In one room you might be attaching robot heads to a maze program, in another you might be cracking a safe playing Mastermind. You’ll be doing logic, programming, and math in The Castle of Dr. Brain. You’ll learn about synonyms, homonyms, ciphers, and foreign words in The Island of Dr. Brain.

They’re both pretty fun, with KQ6 style graphics and a familiar interface. The locales are goofy and exaggerated with a beautiful cartoon aesthetic. The 4th-wall humour is quite reminiscent of Space Quest (it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the same people were involved here.) It’s amusing to watch a tiki statue eat a passing mosquito or a large wooden door roll up like a curtain. Really, it’s too bad there are only these two games in the series.

Oh what’s that? There are more? No, I don’t think so. Sierra outsourced the later Dr. Brain sequels to Bright Star, a different studio. They stripped it of it’s adventuring nature, leaving behind something akin to a puzzle book off a magazine rack. FOR SHAME.

Fool’s Errand – Mac, DOS, Amiga, Atari ST (1987) [ Cliff Johnson ]

Now here is a heavy contender for greatest puzzle game of all time and a personal favourite. My friend’s daughter won’t be playing this one for at least another twenty years. Most puzzle games rarely excel beyond the basics learning and skill-forming. They try to be ideal for children or adults looking for a little challenge.

Very rarely does a game decide to take the gloves off and demand the tireless sweat of a true puzzle fanatic. Fool’s Errand is not one for the inexperienced.

Don’t be fooled by the simple puzzles like word searches and jigsaws. This is but a small sample of the vast library to follow. Fool’s Errand gets so tough that it becomes brutal, unforgiving, and demands you use your best skills to solve it.

And when it’s all over? You discover that all the puzzles connect into a much larger meta-puzzle. The solutions to past puzzles and the dialog of characters becomes clues for a grand treasure hunt. And that hunt leads to a lot of secret hidden puzzles. And then the FINAL CREDITS is *itself* a puzzle!

It’s crazy! It’s the sort of stuff that would leave Professor Layton himself in tears. Only the puzzliest of puzzle freaks need apply here. I only hope the sequel can live up to this harsh awesome standard.