{"id":6639,"date":"2021-08-16T22:33:15","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T05:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=6639"},"modified":"2023-10-01T15:08:07","modified_gmt":"2023-10-01T22:08:07","slug":"daedalian-depths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/6639","title":{"rendered":"Daedalian Depths"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daedalian Depths<\/em> is a gamebook in the tradition of Chris Manson’s Maze<\/em>, where “in the tradition of” is a politer way of saying “that blatantly imitates”. Andrew Plotkin has a review of it here<\/a>; like him, I got a copy when it was released, but I’m in such a puzzle glut that I didn’t get around to going through it until now. It’s by Rami Hansenne, who also created Codex Enigmatum<\/em>, which is a lot like Journal 29<\/em><\/a>, which is based on web-based riddle chains like notpron<\/em><\/a>. These are all puzzle-hunt-like things where the solutions of puzzles feed into other puzzles. Journal 29<\/em> used a web site as an intermediary between its interlinked puzzles; Codex Enigmatum<\/em> has an online solution checker, but doesn’t absolutely require it; Daedelian Depths<\/em> doesn’t have an online component at all. It’s meant to be self-confirming, like a cryptic crossword.<\/p>\n

But more importantly, it differs from Codex Enigmatum<\/em> by the Maze<\/em> format. Everything is placed in illustrations of rooms, with a page of facing text; clues in each room let you know which exit to take, which is to say, which page to turn to next. CE<\/em> didn’t have any overarching context other than itself as a book. This makes a tremendous difference to the feel of the thing, making it come off as more of a cohesive whole rather than a mishmash of disparate puzzles, even though that’s really what it is. But it still carries a lot of the CE<\/em>\/J29<\/em> feel as well, simply due to the cheap paper and fuzzy, indistinct art style. It’s better than Maze<\/em> in a lot of ways, but production values are not one of them. (CE<\/em> and J29<\/em> at least had the excuse that you were expected to write on them with pencil.)<\/p>\n

I’ll reiterate what Zarf said: The most important innovation this book has over Maze<\/em> is simply that its riddles are reasonably solvable. Maze<\/em> had a contest associated with it, so it was expected that most people wouldn’t solve it. DD<\/em> wants you to win, however much it pretends otherwise. Its second most important innovation is redundancy. Every page has multiple clues indicating which door to take. Sometimes I can’t figure them all out — sometimes I don’t even notice<\/em> them all. But having multiple clues means I don’t need to. Not only that, multiple clues means that individual clues can afford to be sketchy. This is where the self-confirmation factor gets in: multiple sketchy clues that all point at the same thing add up to good certainty. It’s like science that way.<\/p>\n

Let me give a concrete example of what I’m talking about. In one room, there’s a portrait of Beethoven on the wall, showing him standing in front of a large full moon. It’s not the focus of the room or anything, it’s just a detail in the background. But it’s rendered in enough detail to seem important. The juxtaposition of Beethoven and moon suggests the Moonlight Sonata, aka Piano Sonata #14. And indeed the room contains a door labeled “14”. This connection is tenuous enough that it might not convince you on its own that door 14 is the right one, but it’s a strong confirmation.<\/p>\n

At any rate, I’m mainly posting about it here as a way to get eyes on my notes. Here they are!<\/a> If you have the book, you can use this as a source of hints, but what I really want you to do is comment and add to it. Even though I’ve found the correct path through the maze, there are redundant clues that I do not understand, and I want to understand them. To that end, I tried to find an existing forum or wiki, but the results were disappointing, particularly for rooms off the main path; even the author’s own message board had very few comments. So I’m trying to fill that gap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daedalian Depths is a gamebook in the tradition of Chris Manson’s Maze, where “in the tradition of” is a politer way of saying “that blatantly imitates”. Andrew Plotkin has a review of it here; like him, I got a copy when it was released, but I’m in such a puzzle glut that I didn’t get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[697,598,699,701,698,729],"class_list":["post-6639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daedalian-depths","tag-journal-29","tag-maze","tag-puzzle-books","tag-rami-hansenne","tag-things-that-arent-strictly-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6639"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7495,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639\/revisions\/7495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}