Which Cliché HOPA task is the Most Annoying?

We should create a HOPA mini-game where one person posts a single object such as "wooden ruler" and everyone else has to guess what the item will be used for

That would make a good Jeopardy! category.

Answer: Paper clip
Question: What is commonly used to fix a broken zipper?

Or how about hammers? Honestly, as long as what you're using is sturdy enough, there are lots of things around that can be used to hammer in a nail or screw. I have an old diamond drill bit that my grandfather gave me. It works just fine, as long as I remember not to drop it. It's heavy enough to smash fingers and toes that get in the way.

And why don't people just keep their tools around that they need? Constantly throwing stuff away and having to find them again...

Broken pulleys... In King's Heir: Rise to the Throne, Edmund Ulmer has to trot all over Griffinvale to find part of a mechanism to fix the torture rack so he can rescue Randall (why not just untie him and help him down?). And the funny thing is, if you look at how that thing is constructed, it doesn't actually work that way in the first place. Unless the wooden slats that it's made of stretch somehow (which there's no indication they do), the wheel-pulley-belt mechanism is unnecessary.

Besides which, a close look reveals that Randall isn't even tied down on that thing. I remember wondering how he stayed put in the position he was drawn in, and figured, "Must be velcro." I can only imagine that this was due to being overlooked, or not wanting it to be too graphic for a general audience of gamers.

I've fixed that in my story, of course. The rack is constructed differently, it really works, and he's really tied to it. And yeah, he really does get tortured for awhile.

(torture racks are really cheerful things to research - not! It's one of the most cruel inventions ever, when used as intended)

@pennmom, I just cannot choose only three annoying HOPA cliches in this poll. I want to vote for all of them. Almost all of them happen in every HOPA game. One of the most annoying things about HOPA games is that I, as the central character in the game, am incapable of hanging on to any tool for more than a few minutes. There have been a few games, maybe a half dozen in all my years of playing HOPAs, where you are given a multitool or a Swiss Army knife and get to keep it for the whole game. We almost always play as some sort of detective but we are never prepared for anything. Not even the Master Detective in the MCF games. If we were Master Plumbers in a HOPA game, we'd have to hunt down a pipe wrench in a hollow tree to fix the kitchen sink because our plumbing truck would be empty.

I always love it when someone is kidnapped or worse drowning or in a burning building and like Jo stated above, I run around tinkering with multiple broken junk to progress, search a Hidden Object Scene, play a mini-game, put several + items together once I find the glue...and then I save the victim as if they would have survived that long in reality



IF ONLY I knew how to program a game...I bet if I had the funds, I could create a knock your socks off, blow you off your computer chair, jaw dropping puzzle adventure, and I'd put a huge disclaimer on it:

WARNING: this game does NOT include any lame cliché tasks and you will be required to use your brain, if you don't like to think... RUN! 

In King's Heir: Rise to the Throne (for those who don't know, I'm novelizing this as a fanfic project - have been working on it for over 3 years now), there's a part of the game where the Ulmer brothers have to get across the river and find out what happened to the guards on the other side, because they're not letting the bridge down so the King's carriage can cross it (never mind that they're on the way back to the palace and this is NOT the quickest way to get there unless there's a ferry we never see). They find a rowboat on the riverbank - and they didn't expect to find it. So how were they going to cross the river without a boat?

Anyway, the boat's hull has a hole in it, so they have to fix it. Edmund (the pov character) trots off to an abandoned mill, where happily he finds everything he needs to make glue (after searching for and finding the tools and materials needed to fix the ladder that leads him to the primary ingredient for making glue). So he makes glue (after a combination hidden object search and puzzle), goes back to the boat, where his brother has somehow, miraculously succeeded in making "a sort of board"... apparently without tools. They get the boat fixed, head across the river, and on with the story. Good thing they did fix the boat, since it would have been a difficult swim with both of them wearing their armor and weapons. No wonder by the time they found the guards (murdered) and fixed the mechanism for the bridge, the bad guys had enough time to murder the king and leave a note framing the Ulmer brothers (honestly, if you were going to murder the king, would you leave a note with the murder weapon, bragging that you'd done it?).

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Sounds like encumbrance rules for Dungeons & Dragons. As long as the encumbrance doesn't exceed the limit mathematically, it doesn't matter that a fighter is holding his weapon at the ready in one hand, a lantern in the other, and carrying a large treasure chest, all at the same time. The fighter in our game actually pointed this out in one of our sessions, wondering how he could possibly do all this.

Someone actually wrote a short Fighting Fantasy adventure based on what you describe. It's like a combination of Choose Your Own Adventure and Dungeons & Dragons. FF is a series of over 5 dozen solo-player gamebooks, where your character has a quest to fulfill, monsters to slay, treasure to find, magic to use... I fully novelized one of them for my NaNoWriMo project in 2016 - that was the first time I pulled out a November win, with 60,000+ words in 30 days. I'm still rather proud of that story (based on the gamebook Caverns of the Snow Witch). I've got a side-story planned, based on a couple of characters the main character met.

So that, and making a go of some other FF games, then tackling the first Park Ranger game, it seems that my NaNoWriMo writing niche is novelizing games (strictly fanfiction, which means it can't ever be published - no money will be made from any of these, not even a cent). It's fun at times - figuring out how it's possible that the same pizza box shows up every year on the roof of the abandoned mine at Pinecreek Hills and even survived the fire they had there.

But it's also frustrating, trying to work with situations where Edmund Ulmer quotes Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm in King's Heir... because that game takes place 500 years before Shakespeare was born and even longer before the Brothers Grimm were born. I haven't yet decided if I should just ignore those quotes and make up something else, or if those authors were born centuries out of time (since it's alt-history, it doesn't matter if Shakespeare never writes his historical plays because none of those monarchs are going to exist in my story's universe). There's an element of magic that gets thrown in at seemingly the last minute. I had to decide whether to ignore it and write a different ending or work with it. I opted to work with it, since I've written well past the end of the game into sequel territory.

  Maybe they used titanium back in ye olden days  Rolling Along

In my well over a decade with BFG I've been programed to be excited on Thursday to see what new game is offered and hungrily read every review and of course purchase said game. Today I saw a Domini game and just closed the site. In my opinion the worst offender of these crazy repeated tasks that make my eyes roll and glaze over. It doesn't matter if it has an awesome story. I can't get myself to purchase any more of their games. Done ranting but feel better,

I love it when someone is in danger (like drowning) and you are required to do a HO and solve a few puzzles before you have equipment to save them supposedly