(02-21-2026, 10:47 AM)Whooly Shambler Wrote: I'd say that it's also one thing if a game in general has out there logic and being thrown curveballs. I think that's why KQ5 is so infamous for the "moon logic" among those games - it just kind of suddenly throws these solutions from nowhere in particular. I don't think there's any indication that the cheese would work to revive the wand, though it's been years since I've played it so maybe it's thrown in somewhere obvious. Either way, the issue is that if you miss the cheese there's no way of knowing that you *need* that item. If they had at least thrown in that you need mold or something, then you'd probably realize that you need to explore that dark dungeon more.

King's Quest 5 definitely has notorious moon logic, but I personally feel a lot of the moon logic started appearing when the transition to point and click took place.  I know Sierra is notorious for selling tons of hint books, but as a person who grew up playing AGI Sierra game without knowing how to save, I beat every game I played without saving and without a hint book, so I know they could be beaten.

Really, it's the point and click where I started to notice the moon logic.  Personally, I feel it's because part of the challenge with the text parser games is figuring out what you have to do.  As an example, take King's Quest 4.  When you're in the whale's mouth, it becomes obvious of what you have to do.  The question is, what's that dangly thing in the mouth called?  And short of having a BBS or hint book, it's not something you could quickly look up.

Another example in KQ4 I've noticed modern gamers state is the bridle.  But it's like, if you've played games back then, it was hardly difficult or moon logic.  You're on an island and you see a boat.  You look at the boat, and the game will tell you that you see something inside the boat.  Look inside the boat, and the game tells you that you see a bridle.  As for use of the bridle, maybe it's because I'm a huge mythology fan, but Pegasus (though not a unicorn) could only be tamed by a golden bridle, so I didn't see much of a leap of logic there either.

But with point and click, you lost those types of puzzles, because they could now be solved with simple clicking, rather than having to figure out what to do.  And really, that's where my love of the genre started to take a hit.