I’m going to slightly spoil a puzzle here: specifically, revealing the arcane process of opening an envelope. In the course of trying to rescue his girlfriend from an evil scientist’s mansion, our hero Dave discovers a hidden envelope with something mysterious inside. Tearing it open to discover its contents, Dave unknowingly kills his girlfriend. The end. Turns out, depending on which two friends were selected to tag along at the start, carelessly tearing open this envelope can quietly leave you with no way to finish. The goal is to open it gingerly enough to be intact for future use, so try to imagine how this might be accomplished. Maybe there could be a letter opener somewhere, or only certain characters are careful enough, or maybe recovering it after giving it to the intended recipient would work… but none of these are correct, and the real answer is to microwave it. It loosens up the glue, opening up the envelope safely. However, I lied, that’s not the real answer, which is to microwave it with a jar full of water next to it to ensure the humidity remains high enough to loosen the glue without burning.

Singling out a puzzle like this is usually to demonstrate some ludicrous moon logic, but Maniac Mansion almost runs too far in the opposite direction. It requires normal Earth logic in such oddly specific ways that it’s almost equally opaque, but that’s sorta why I love it. It’s not like you’re in a realm of magic and fairy tales that builds off references and genre assumptions, the most difficult solutions actually require fairly mundane reasoning to solve. The house is just a small, singular location, so it’s easy to find all your tools quickly, and start theorizing the uses for each character. It’s common to come across a new item and think “Ah, if I get stuck, I can bring this other character next time and try that” and slowly learn the extent of the possibilities. That’s why the aforementioned softlocks are so heartbreaking, since they’re the only factor that prevent this from being a perfect genre entry point. It gets even more complicated when considering the version differences, like how ruining the envelope was considered too brutal to include in the NES port, and was removed. However, the interface doesn’t work well with a controller and many details were censored, so there’s no way around some awkwardness. If you’re coming into it cold, I would recommend playing the 1989 PC version and including Bernard in your trio, since he’s accepted as contributing to the smoothest route and doesn’t require any envelope microwaving. And really, I do recommend it in spite of the issues; I think its concept for a small-scale but layered adventure game is one that still holds a lot of promise. I would love to try some indie games that put their unique spin on the idea, at least in a way that doesn’t involve me despondently sitting in front of a microwave any more than I already do.