The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The narrator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is third-person omniscient, but most importantly -- it's also evilly unreliable. It lies, is snarky, mocks you, and takes a certain satisfaction in explaining why you, despite your entirely reasonable last move, are dead. Fundamentally, the game and the Universe in general, are out to get you. Even the Invisiclues are misleading and sarcastic. Based on the first book of Douglas Adam's absurdist existential "trilogy", the game parodies sci-fi tropes, tech companies, and bureaucracy, among other other things. And despite all of this "abuse", it's a hilariously brilliant game experience.

Game Play

• It's definitely worthwhile to read the (first) book before playing the game, just for more context.
• In the first part you play as Arthur Dent, beginning on Earth and ending on a stolen spaceship.
• In the second part, you're on the spaceship and the main story continues with Arthur, but also with multiple subplots/flashbacks. You play many of these as different characters.
• Playing from the point of view of other characters really enhances the humor of the game -- we all know Arthur can be a little dull. The overlapping of the subplots with the main one is cleverly done.
• The game is fairly small as far as the number of actual rooms and items. I never had to draw a map.
• There's a lot of care put into the descriptive text for various scenarios and outcomes, and in many cases it's "worthwhile" experiencing alternate outcomes (i.e. your death) just to see these. I suspect a lot of the game's memory space went to these enhanced passages.
• Sometimes it's difficult to know what is expected or when you have completed a subplot. Watching your inventory and score can help.

The Puzzles

• The puzzles are hard, but not brutal. Nearly all of the puzzles have reasonable clues -- in hindsight. Mostly I just failed to appreciate their implications the first time around; I had to resort to Invisiclues 4 or 5 times. Details in the narrative are extremely important in this game, no matter how small. The Guide is your friend.
• You should not have the same expectations of the puzzles here as those in other Infocom games. Many puzzles have a lot of knots to untie before resolution.
• I felt like the Invisiclues were entirely sufficient to solve the game. A walk thru would have been faster, but this game is more about the journey than the solution.
• Keep lots of saves. Expect to go back up and replay some of the subplots once you understand more about the game. Fortunately, the game space isn't that large, so replay, though annoying, is not that time-consuming.
• The whole mechanism surrounding playing the subplots is not really explained, and it takes a while to figure out what's really happening and how to master it.

Some Favorite Quotes
These don't really spoil much.

• (Spoiler - click to show)For a dead person you are talking too much. As the ambulance reaches the mortuary a fleet of Vogon Constructor ships unexpectedly arrives and demolishes the Earth to make way for a new hyperspace bypass.
• (Spoiler - click to show)A wisp of an inkling of a thought penetrates the three-inch thickness of solid bone surrounding the guards' very tiny brains that something suspicious is going on. As you begin taking the rifles, so do several of the guards. They may be dim, but they know what to do with a photon rifle. Everything becomes...
• (Spoiler - click to show)Just as the Beast is trying to work out where you've disappeared to, it suddenly sees its own name freshly carved on the sandstone memorial. This disconcerts it, as it has no recollection of eating itself. Slowly it dawns on the creature that someone is trying to make a fool of it. It starts to look for you again.

Still a great play 40 years after release, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an ingenious mix of sardonic humor, biting parody and challenging puzzles. Playing it is definitely a jump into the deep end, but worth every move.