“Find the feather” from Frederick Hill
I was playing the video game “Haven: Call of the King” last night, and I was stuck on the “Clearwater Bay” level. As is often the case in a video game, I needed to collect a certain number of objects to proceed, five feathers, to be exact. I had four. The level is a small village by the ocean, and the feathers I had already acquired were on a hill, in a breakable pot on a roof, in another pot that had to be broken with a special magical creature, and yet another pot defended by five laser-blasting guards. I spent an hour looking for that last #@!# feather, but to no avail.
I kept looking in the same places and trying the same actions over and over again, which made me think that the Debugging Rules could be applied. I thought about the first rule, “Understand the System”. Of course I could just go find the solution on the web, but I wanted to solve the problem myself. Well, I thought, maybe I need to learn the layout of the level more, understand more about what is where. Within five minutes, I found a ledge that I had never reached, in another five, I got to it, and what do you know, in a breakable pot up there, I found my fifth feather.