I recently played Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and found the game nothing short than anything who desires games with well written and well constructed stories, and I'll probably be writing a review of it. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. What I'm here to talk about is the design of a game and the level of required skill and ability of the player that is expected out of a player.

*Spoilers to a puzzle of Dreamfall*

So to make things clear, I got into an argument with my brother about this particular puzzle in Dreamfall. Your in this cave and monsters are between you and the end of this level. You can fight the monsters and a particular melody will play in the background, but at the end of the level you have to remember what that melody was and play that melody in order to solve the puzzle. Mind you this is about 15-20 minutes from the time you can fight these monsters and the time you can solve the puzzle, with absolutely no indication and no mention to the music in the background. So when I got there I couldn't figure out what to do, and my brother next to me was cringing going like "It's so OBVIOUS!", then I basically give up and ask him what do I do after backtracking and listing to the music in the background as to no avail. He obviously said that the melody is played when you kill the monsters and the monsters also hum this melody. I justified my stance of not being able to solve the puzzle that the developers and the music director should have pointed out the sound in some particular way in order for me to solve the puzzle, and to add that I couldn't have access to the melody after which I hit the puzzle and the last save was about 1 hour back. In short I was screwed because I couldn't figure out the melody.



So after which we got into an argument of what is expected out of a player. I said that a played should be assumed by the developer that he has no background knowledge and has to be supplied with all the information and all the training necessary to pass the level. That is one of the reasons why Valve has been so renound for it's design because if you read the developer commentary, they are absolute geniuses in  their game design of teaching you without telling you. However my brother said that it would be too easy and too obvious if they told you or informed you of the melody.

So what is expected out of a player when he plays the game? How much hand holding do you give the player until you cut him lose to figure things out on his own?