You'd better be out the window before he recovers, or else he'll suspect what you're up to. Once you get into the duchess's private garden, hoping to get a closer look at that mysterious statue you've seen from the nursery window, you find yourself trapped in a hedge maze. Even longtime fans of the IF genre notice with frustration that nearly every game has a variation of a maze puzzle . The first IF stories were written by highly technical people, for the enjoyment of other highly technical people. It is not uncommon for the plot in an IF story to come to a screeching halt, in order to force the player to navigate a maze.
Some people find a pencil and a sheet of graph paper is the best solution.
I put everything you need to know in my report. You can ask Clancy to print you up a copy,' he says. Many NPCs are simply want you to give them or show them something. They may respond by giving you a new item, by allowing you to pass through a previously blocked door, or by giving you a clue to a different puzzle. A good IF author will allow for all these variations.