Your Guide
If someone’s going to spoil your game, you’d better make sure they do it exactly how you like it.
Ihave a confession to make. The hefty Prima guide for Baldur’s Gate 2 did not leave my side, basically from Chapter 3 right to the end of that gigantic game, on my first playthrough. I still had to fight the dragons, I just knew which toilets to look in, for diamonds. More importantly, the guide explained that when a vampire hits you, it drains levels. I honestly didn’t know why my characters were getting weaker and stupider, nor that there were ways to both rectify this and protect against it. I may have even restarted the game.
In a sprawling RPG that’s full of rules, people who want guides probably just want to know how to play and that they’re not missing any great loot. Also, the feeling of, “I seriously do not have time to get lost in this game,” I had while playing The Witcher 3 saw me bookmarking Brenna Hillier’s guide on VG247. She tells me it gets a lot of hits, even now. I was asking her about process because I recently made a Universal Hint System style guide for Thimbleweed Park in Twine. No immediate spoilers, only incrementally more explicit hints.
Basically, I couldn’t stand the idea of people looking for small hints to my favourite ever adventure and getting full spoilers by searching for a YouTube Let’s Play or full walkthrough. It’s like when Dragon Age 2 had no item descriptions and I got so sad that I wrote 23,000 words about armour and swords. Fan projects are weird. I’ve never really understood cosplay, for example, but I imagine once you’re gripped by the need to knit chainmail, it’s hard to shake.
My guide was already at 1000 total unique visits when I noticed several
I imagine once you’re gripped by the need to knit chainmail, it’s hard to shake
of the Thimbleweed Park developers tweeting about how players should cherish the pre-walkthrough first week after release. IIt gave me pause to consider how I actually felt about providing hints. Seeing people asking for hints on the Steam forum and getting full spoilers broke my heart, then steeled it, so I started promoting my Twine more rigorously. Then, a few days later, three of the designers tweeted my guide and one even pinned it.
Guide creators always seem frustrated, although understandably, by people copying their work without attribution and I rarely see a connection with the people they’re writing their guide for. It seems more like, “Look, I did it first.”
Making my Twine for Thimbleweed Park hints was time consuming and difficult to test, but I loved the process. Indeed, the first thing I ever wrote for PC Powerplay was in assisting another writer with a game guide for The Sims 2, where we dug into optimal play styles. People on the internet can endlessly and pointlessly spoil games, but a guide that enriches your experience of the game is gold. Interestingly, I noticed someone has catalogued the locations of TWP’s nearly 900 backer written books in the mansion library. Niche, but amazing.
And, great games inspire great guides. I have a Bradygames guide to Civilization IV with optimal civics combinations for every early and late game strategy, as well as ideas for how to manage a range of human opponents. In this case, the game’s depth makes the guide’s creative sections really shine. Sometimes, the guide is even more enjoyable than the game. I’m sorry to say that I was hanging off every word of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura’s manual in a way that the game never quite matched.
Should people feel guilty for needing, or using, game guides? The adventure genre seems to suffer from the, “Do it without hints,” mentality, but it’s probably less to do with old-school elitism and more because adventure players understand that figuring out puzzles is what makes you feel good. When I was reviewing Thimbleweed Park before release, I asked the very attentive PR contact for two tiny nudges. Asking a real person is prohibitive, which helped to ensure I didn’t crack before getting properly frustrated. Proper frustration is when you should crack.
I have another confession to make. I never made it to the end of Planescape: Torment. However, I did recently see a game guide for it, written by Chris Avellone. Then last week, a review key for the enhanced edition landed in my inbox, so perhaps it is a sign. Meanwhile, if you’re stuck in Thimbleweed Park, but only if you’re truly frustrated, come and play my Twine; You Deserve Tiny Incremental Hints for Thimbleweed Park on philome.la. Have you looked in the …? And you’ll know what to do without another word.