[typing]
So, uh... anyone know what the big deal is with Pandora's Box?
You always hear bad omens about the thing
and people figuratively opening it regardless.
And I mean who could blame them? That is a pretty sweet box.
Frick, I'd open it.
And so would Detective David Mills.
But the thing is it comes from Greek mythology,
where Pandora was the first woman on Earth, and as such,
she was given a bunch of awesome loot,
one of which was the box.
Which was actually a jar, but who cares?
Box sounds better.
She was given explicit instructions never to open it.
So of course, she did, and in doing so
unleashed the most evil evilness to ever be evil,
which then spread around the world doing evil crap forever.
What the frick does that have to do with today's game?
Pandora's Box,
a Windows PC title developed and published by Microsoft in 1999.
Though as you can see, it's got some serious game designer street cred,
being the brain child of Alexey Pajitnov,
the legendary creator of the legendary Tetris.
"Puzzles are where the journey begins..."
Which is great, because if they ended there,
then we wouldn't have much of a game, would we?
But in order to play Pandora's Box,
you must first OPEN Pandora's Box!
[orchestral sting]
Which is no big deal, it turns out, as it's just cardboard,
and I now feel only nominally more evil.
[ding]
Inside the box for Pandora's Box,
you get Pandora's Box on the Pandora's Box CD
tucked away in the Pandora's Box jewel case.
You're also given the Pandora's Box manual,
covering some basic info on Pandora's Box
and how to play Pandora's Box.
[whispering] Pandora's Box...
The game begins with an intro video,
letting you know the story of Pandora
and her box,
which doesn't actually follow the original story at all.
Sure, there's a chick named Pandora who has a box,
that unleashes things,
but there's no ultimate evil inside,
just seven tricksters.
These jokers just wander the world and visit various cities,
like mythological Carmen Sandiego henchmen,
and screw up famous, and not so famous, pieces of art.
Of course, that means it's up to you
...whoever you are...
to save the world from the slight nuisance that is
the seven tricksters.
So your first mission is to capture the first trickster, Maui.
Each of these tricksters is based on a myth from around the world,
like the myth of Maui in this case,
who is said to have created the Hawaiian Islands.
But boys having godlike powers has nothing to do with the game,
so just take a look at the world map and choose your destination.
The goal here is to find enough pieces to Pandora's Box
to track down the trickster,
and once you do, you can recapture them.
But in order for that to happen, you have to visit the world cities
and solve a bunch of logic puzzles.
Each city has ten logic puzzles to solve,
and there are ten types of them you may run across,
although more often than not, there are only four or five types for each location.
But the thing is the location of the piece in each... location
is randomized in each city,
so you just have to keep solving puzzles and hope you run across it.
Sometimes it'll be the first one you pick, other times it'll be the very last,
so it really is up to chance as to how long it'll take to beat the game.
In theory, each puzzle is built to be solved in 15 minutes or less,
though that also varies wildly, depending on how your brain works
and how far along you are in the game.
And sometimes you won't unlock a box piece at all,
and instead will unlock a useable hint or free puzzle token,
the former of which lets you know where the next move is
for the current puzzle piece,
and the latter of which solves the puzzle outright.
And there are even occasions where you'll be given a timed challenge
where if you solve the puzzle without any assistance before the timer runs out,
the location of the next box piece will be revealed.
And once you do have all the pieces
for the current barely annoying vermin/trickster,
you're given one far more challenging puzzle to solve.
And that's honestly about it for the gameplay.
Just do this enough times to catch all the tricksters and you win.
But whatever, man, the puzzles themselves are the main attraction here,
so let's take a quick look at what Alexey Pajitnov had up his sleeve.
The first puzzle type is Focus Point,
which while it may seem like the name of a pretty average
mid-'90s action-thriller kinda thing starring somebody,
it's not! It's a puzzle,
where you have pieces of a picture to assemble into an image.
You can switch any piece with any other piece.
So even though you may not know what the image is supposed to be,
chances are you can figure out a lot
just by looking at the aspect ratio and resolution of the pieces.
It obviously gets way more freaking difficult later on,
but it's still simple enough
and is one of the absolutely most common puzzle types.
Another super common one is Overlap.
which takes the idea of reassembling an image
and makes it a bit more like a jigsaw puzzle.
But unlike a typical jigsaw puzzle,
here each piece will overlap with another piece,
whether it be an actual part of the final image
or a part of the background.
And the importance of that background cannot be understated,
so pay close attention to the lines, the angle they're drawn
and the shade of the color behind them,
if you want to SURVIVE!
Next is Rotoscope,
where you're trying to build an image
by moving the pieces on concentric rings.
It's basically a variant on the classic sliding tiles puzzle
and personally, I've never been a huge fan of those,
so I'm not terribly keen on this either.
Then there's Image Hole.
Heh heh. Which is, um...
It's, it's a nice name, it's got "hole" in it,
and it's probably the only puzzle I find really burdensome.
This one has multiple cutout shapes floating around the screen
and the idea is that you find the image underneath
that matches up with the shape.
The problem is the shapes never stop moving.
And sometimes you can click on the shape to place it,
and it clicks on another shape instead,
or doesn't quite hit the right spot and it counts against you.
And since it's three strikes and you're out,
this is a bit of a problem at times,
especially with a bunch of little shapes flying around at once.
Next is Slices,
and this is a simple object-building puzzle.
Rotate, flip, stack.
There you go.
Build things!
Next, we have Find and Fill,
and this is kind of a hidden object puzzle
where you have to point out the various outlines and shapes missing
from the piece of art in the corner.
You use different colored paints to do this
and sometimes it may just look like a bunch of scribbles,
but it's definitely a bunch of shapes.
Somewhere...
Another puzzle type is Outer Layer,
and I always really liked this one
because it reminded me of working with 3D Studio Max or something.
You're given a three-dimensional object that's missing textures
so the idea here is to take the missing pieces
and plop them onto the model.
I dunno, this just tickles my brain something fierce and I love it.
Next up, we have Jesse's Strips,
and NO, I don't know who Jesse is
and why they have strips named after them.
Maybe it's a brand of paper shredder
because that's kind of what this is.
You've got a piece of art that's been shredded into strips,
and not only one set of strips, but four,
on separate trays with unique colorization.
And yeah, it's not as simple as it looks, trust me on that one.
Lens Bender is another puzzle type
and here you have six different lenses to look at a bunch of objects
that must be assembled under the large metal lens.
Sometimes it's a painting, sometimes it's... something else,
but it's always quite the brain bender to figure out just where things go.
And you often end up taking a lot more of a trial-and-error approach
than most of the other puzzle types,
just to see what actually fits where.
And lastly, you have Interlock,
and this definitely looks like something that Pajitnov had his hand in designing.
You're given a shape to fill and a number of pieces to fill it,
but there's really only one way to do so.
Rotate, flip and swap the minutes away
and try and figure it out.
And yes, it's every bit as challenging as it looks
and it kind of drives me crazy.
So... Pandora's Box.
It's pretty much a puzzle game and not much more, right?
Yeah, I dunno. I think it's pretty fantastic, actually.
Yeah, it's just a collection of logic puzzles
and they may get a bit repetitive before long,
and the story it has IS incredibly simple.
But it freaking works for me
because it doesn't get bogged down with a bunch of other stuff.
It's really just puzzles.
Sometimes games with logic puzzles end up going another route,
and throw in a bunch of adventure game kind of stuff in there, too.
And I usually have no problem with that,
but sometimes the puzzles distract from the adventure
and the adventure distracts from the puzzles,
a la The 7th Guest.
Unlike here, where it's just a bunch of brain teasers
with a pretty skin, pretty music, and a pretty mythologically-based story
to give you a somewhat rational reason
to continue wandering the planet in search of more puzzles.
Unfortunately, the game is incredibly hard to find nowadays,
especially boxed,
and you're going to pay a hefty amount for it,
even for loose copies, unless you just get really lucky.
But if you do happen to run across it in some form or another,
I'd definitely open up Pandora's Box
and unleash all that puzzlingly logical, non-evil tricksiness onto your computer.