Nakar posted:

The main issue there is a game design problem. Let's look at the Ice Dragon puzzle again because it's bullshit.

It is actually possible to tell the ice bridge that you know the Ice Dragon has a family, which would be a huge hint toward the puzzle if true because it forces the Ice Dragon to be Carange (who has a mate and child) and not Balparaise (who won't even meet with other dragons). Even if you have no idea who the family is, the fact that the bridge confirms it seems to be a hint (admittedly it could have been like you said and a trap for calling out cheating, but in this case it isn't). Problem is... you can't get out of this situation alive except by having already solved the Ice Dragon's puzzle. I don't consider the use of meta-knowledge from a death to be fair puzzle design unless the game is specifically built around it in some way. For example, ManxomeBromide recently did an LP of the IF game Hadean Lands where looping actions and acquiring information from dead end gamestates was acceptable, but that's because the structure of the game is meant to work that way and you can't beat it without forcing unwinnable states, and part of the game's final puzzle is figuring out ways to stretch your resources and accumulated knowledge far enough to not render the game unwinnable en route to the part where you actually win.

In MadMaze, dying is considered to be a fail state. Thus, critical clues should not be hidden in those states, and for the most part they aren't outside of a few wry winks toward the correct course of action that you could've figured out otherwise. If you get to the ice bridge and bluff it enough to find out that the Ice Dragon has a family, you need to already know the Ice Dragon's clues and solve the puzzle on the spot with that new information to bypass the bridge. Okay, you say, so just do it that way: Talk to the Ice Dragon, get his clues, don't solve his puzzle yet, go to the ice bridge, use the info about his wife and child to narrow down the Ice Dragon's identity, solve the bridge's puzzle, then backtrack to the Ice Dragon himself.

...But see, you can't, because the Ice Dragon will only give you the clues after locking you into his own puzzle, which you cannot completely solve. You have to answer the Ice Dragon's puzzle correctly, or else you die, same as how you have to answer the bridge's puzzle correctly. There is no existing gamestate that lets you, essentially, come into this scenario blind, having never once died in the game, and get out of it without obtaining necessary knowledge by dying. The alternative is to guess and be correct, which has a 50% chance of killing you anyway. That's pretty terrible game design.

This entire sequence could be fixed by letting you back out of the Ice Dragon's puzzle, perhaps by using the Talisman to freeze time and flee (which you can do before getting the clues). You would then bluff the bridge into revealing something about the Ice Dragon it didn't want you to know, use that info on the spot to finish the puzzle, answer the bridge correctly to "prove" your association with the Ice Dragon, and then return to the Ice Dragon for the spell you need now that you're certain of his identity.