Overview
- This puzzle presents a maze-like palace that is filled with many doors.
- There is a clear route through the maze, but it is filled with a multitude of difficult spiky obstacles to overcome.
- The doors continually change colour.
- The only colour that has significance is the gold colour, as if the player steps through a gold door, a life will be lost.
- The doors transport the player to a random part of the maze.
- The player may be sent forwards, allowing the end to be reached quicker.
- However, the player may also go backwards, causing him/her to re-tread old ground.
- Once a door has been used it permanently remains gold.
- Hence the player is presented with an interesting gambling situation.
The player is now mid-way through the book. Thanks to Dunyazad, Scheherazade has managed to evade execution. Each night, Dunyazad asks Scheherazade to tell her a story. Scheherazade’s stories are so wondrous that the king cannot resist listening to them. As Scheherazade always stops her stories on a cliffhanger, the king allows her to live for one more day to continue her tales.
Scheherazade is currently telling the story of ‘Agib – the Third Calender’.
Puzzle Mechanics
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Agib is an Arabian palace that is filled with multiple floors and doors. On every floor is a fiddly spiked obstacle to overcome. The obstacle is not impossible, but it will test the player’s patience. Next to the obstacle is a door which will send the player to a random part of the palace. Hence, by using the door the player may be sent to an easier obstacle to overcome or s/he might come across a harder one. S/he might be sent nearer to the exit or further way.
The doors randomly change colour with each second. The player must not enter a door that is coloured gold, or else Agib will break his promise to Princess of the palace and will be banished (causing the player to exit the book).
Each time the player uses a door both the door s/he entered and emerged from will turn gold, which will lower his/her opportunity for evading the spike obstacles.
The puzzle therefore offers a risk incentive – the player can either play the ‘honest’ way by trying to overcome the obstacles, or they can ‘cheat’ and use the door with the hope of finding a short-cut to by-pass the obstacles.
How will the player learn the solution?
As this is the third puzzle in the book, it is an advance puzzle and so the difficult pacing has increased. A brief scripted event in the form of a story screen will subtly inform to the player that they must not enter the golden door. If they do not pick up this clue, then they can work it out through trial and error.
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