Let's Work Together... Three Examples of Retro Puzzle Goodness.

I love old videogames, especially puzzle games. One particularly fun mechanic is having several player characters which must work together in order to solve the goal of the puzzle. Here are three great old games that use this mechanic to a T.

The first game I want tell tell you about is 'The Lost Vikings', published by Blizzard in 1992. In this game the player controls three vikings (one at a time): Erik the Swift, Baleog the Fierce, and Olaf the Stout. Each of these plucky characters have unique abilities which must be used in conjunction at just the right times in order to rescue our lost warriors from several fiendish puzzles. I was first introduced to this classic puzzler by the gameboy advance version. Here is the wikipedia entry, and here is 'The Lost Vikings' on the Home of the Underdogs abandonware site.

Next up is 'The Humans', published by GameTek in 1993. I first found out about this game from reading about the upcoming Nintendo DS version. Then, about a week ago I was shocked to see the original PC version at a thrift store. Needless to say, I quickly parted with $1.99 to pick it up. In this game, you help a band of hapless cavemen to escape from various puzzling areas. Like the vikings, the humans will need to work together if they are to escape. However, in this game it is the objects that the humans pick up, and their initial placement, which make them each key to a particular part of each puzzle. I'm definitely looking forward to playing this on the DS. Here is the wikipedia entry for this gem, and here it is on Home of the Underdogs.

The last of our trio of player character co-op puzzle games is 'Quadrax'. This game was published by JRC Interactive in 1996. Here is a good site on its history (incidentally, the author of this website has written a series of sequels to the game which are definitely worth checking out -- the screenshot is from 'Quadrax V'). This game works like its predecessors. The initial placement of the player characters determines the role they play in solving each puzzle.

You may have noticed I didn't include 'Lemmings' in this entry. Don't get me wrong, Lemmings is a great puzzle game (great series of games actually). It is slightly different than these other three though. In Lemmings, all of the player characters (the lemmings) start out in the same place, and all of the lemmings have the same abilities (which you assign to them in order to solve the puzzle). So, while Lemmings is a game of working together, it doesn't matter which lemmings do what. For this reason, I would put Lemmings into its own category.

So, if you like the idea of figuring out how to use a team of characters together in order to accomplish one puzzling goal, check these out. Enjoy. I sure have.

- Ed Williams