Nintendo Adventure Book #11 Unjust Desserts Guide
Intro: In this penultimate Nintendo Adventure Book, our pal Yoshi has a birthday part that quickly goes awry. Soon Mario will have to go micro to get to straighten this mess out. As usual read the Nintendo Adventure Book key page to understand how this guide works and contact me on the ‘About me’ page on the main website for questions, concerns, etc. This guide is adapted from a hand written version I started and completed around 8/21/21 and based on my physical copy of this (rare) book. Cool, let’s go!
Disclaimer: This guide belongs to Amia J Moore/ C. Mechayoshi. It may not be copied without permission.
Edited: 1/4/24
Stats
-Chapters: 60
-Endings: 12
-Items:
---Fire Flower: page 83
---Plunger: page 79
---Medicine bottle: page 54
---Wrench: page 76
---Flying Suit (Tanooki): page 79
---Feather (star man): page 40
-Errors: Wrong items depicted on score card, score card mentions ‘coins’ when this book uses points instead, ambiguous puzzles
-High Score: 1166? (see optimal path)
START Page 1 Chapter 1
Yoshi has a B-day party hosted by the Mushroom King. We don’t know how old he is but it’s confirmed to be young. Everyone is having a grand time with all the food before Yoshi eats a purple cherry from the cake. He turns colors and seems sick. Problem (and this will happen a lot) is that Yoshi can’t speak so we have to guess what he’s thinking or trying to do. Should we let him eat the cake?
Puzzle: 1, maze
Reward: 10 points.
Splits: page 32 (eat), page 106 (don’t let him)
Path: -
Puzzles Solution: Don’t let him eat, but irritatingly it’s a random guess maze and the other route will lead to an early hazard.
Page 7, Chapter 4:
Mario lands when a herd of Dino-rhinos rumble his way. He gets away and to a bubbling lake of Koopa Kola. Use the puzzle to know if it’s safe to swim.
Puzzle: math, logic
Splits: page 35 (swim), page 13 (don’t)
Path: from page 42
Puzzle solution: Solve the logic puzzle here where unlike the Doc Drake one, all of the clues are important. You need to understand quarts and ounces too, the only possible obfuscation. By the way, DON’T swim. Go page thirteen.
Page 5, Chapter 2:
Powered up by the starman his foes can do nothing as he goes up the stairs. Soon he smacks into a green rubber boot. Luigi’s! Yes he wear that I guess.
Splits: page 6
Path: from page 119
Page 6, Chapter 3:
Mario finds Luigi who appropriately asks why he’s shrunken down. Anyway, you have the medicine right?
Reward: one-hundred points
Splits: page 63 (bottle), page 72 (no bottle)
Path: from page 61, page 5
Puzzle solution: The medicine bottle is on fifty-four with the tail shenanigans. There’s no second chances for this item check so have it.
Page 10, Chapter 5:
Doc Drake proposes to lower the medicine with a string to Luigi who is supposed to drink it and shrink so he can get out himself. Crazy as it sounds Yoshi is cooperative at first, until he swallows the string. Whoops.
Reward: 50 points
Splits: page 79
Path: from page 64
Page 12, Chapter 6
Mario will be a disgrace back at the plumber’s lodge because he forgot his wrench. More presently it’s game over.
Game over!
Path: from page 50
Page 13, Chapter 7:
Mario meets helpful Mini Dolphins that are nice if also Flat-Earthers. Didn’t think I’d ever be typing that either. Mario safely hitches a ride. Use the puzzle for points.
Reward: various score
Puzzle: maze
Splits: page 119
Path: from page 7
Puzzle solution: Every dolphin you pass is two measly points. Assuming you can’t double over you can get four at most for eight total. Also, you’re going to need the star soon.
Page 16, Chapter 8:
Mario wishes he found a star as unlikely as that would have been inside a dinosaur and all. *wink* Soon he slips into the soda lake and will need rescue. Someday.
Game over
Path: from page 119
Page 17, Chapter 9:
Mario uses the flying suit to get there, no antics needed. Then he grows up.
Reward: two-hundred points
Splits: page 100
Path: from page 82
Page 20, Chapter 11:
Mario goes to the left and is blocked by a giant meatball momentarily. Beyond it are bugs inside of Yoshi and they star pulling him somewhere. Mario springs away, but to where? Use the puzzle.
Reward: variable score
Puzzle: maze, math
Splits: page 90 (<300), page 116 (>300)
Path: from page 69
Puzzle solution: You want to score more than three-hundred on page one-hundred sixteen for this leads to the wrench item. The other path will be a hazard, so get that calculator ready! Remember diagonals are allowed as you zip about the numbers with positive and negative digits. I ‘think’ the max is five-hundred and thirty as I mapped out. With that path I hit almost every plus and only one unavoidable minus spot.
Page 24, Chapter 12:
They hear stuff outside. Yoshi is near a rabbit eating some ‘gonzo grapes’. Peach once again can’t be useful and stop him from eating things he shouldn’t, like grapes that are actually evil and actually contain miniaturized koopas. Oh, and even the rabbit can’t be trusted as he’s actually a magikoopa. What’s with the disguises now? Bad guy swarm Mario quickly.
Buffet: lose one-hundred points
Splits: page 57
Path: from page 74
Puzzle solution: Fun fact, only this ‘bad’ path explains why Bowser people are shrunken down all a sudden. Otherwise it just seems random.
Page 26, Chapter 13:
Mini Bowser meets Mini Mario and the mini enemies swarm. Mario feels this may be a bit much, even for him.
Splits: page 96 (flower), page 86 (no flower)
Path: from page 103
Puzzle solution: If you have the flower get read to get points. Otherwise you NEED the flying suit, okay?
Page 28, Chapter 14:
The bottle breaks when Yoshi hiccoughs more. That’s lame. Back to square one.
Game over!
Path: from page 44
Page 29, Chapter 15
So, they try to hear Luigi through Yoshi’s stomach. It’s goes.. not well. Peach knows a doctor called Dr. Drake (because… he’s a duck), but a random bystander called Fungus Cap is convinced he’s a quack (exact wording) and has some mystery pink pills for Yoshi to take instead. Who to trust? Frankly they both sound suspect but thankfully there’s a puzzle to use.
Puzzle: logic
Splits: page 110 (call), page 88 (listen to FC)
Path: from page 106
Puzzle Solution: You have riddle here not unlike Book #12’s Dr. Shrinkasaurus puzzle. Unlike that however the only clue that matters is the last one which proves that you can trust the duck. The other route will not kill you but it’s leads to trouble.
Page 32, Chapter 16
Yoshi ultimately belches rancidly, causing a ruckus that jostles coins out of Mario’s pocket.
Buffet: lost five points
Splits: page 106
Path: from page 1
Page 33, Chapter 17:
Mario tries Luigi’s boot then uses fire to guide him inadvertently towards the daisies in a sort of funny if cruel way. Soon he’s there and gets back to normal.
Reward: two-hundred points
Splits: page 100
Path: from page 47
Page 35, Chapter 18:
Mario learns that swimming in soda puts one in a sticky situation.
Game over!
Path: from page 7
Page 36, Chapter 19:
Now we’re in a plumber but Luigi is fortunately not as dumb as a dinosaur and realizes he’d better do something. That something is drinking Bowser instead of the medicine. Maybe not such an upgrade. Mario and Bowser fight, meanwhile Luigi gets news from outside. The crew are going to feed a flower to Yoshi to get him to spit out Luigi at Doc Drakes suggestion. Yeah they only NOW think of that. Use the puzzle.
Puzzle: logic
Splits: page 103 (eat threelip), page 56 (don’t)
Path: from page 62
Puzzle solution: See how the threelip fits with the two piles of flower shown that Yoshi should and shouldn’t eat. They give a clue that makes it a little too easy however.. So look at the pedals. The flower is safe on page one-hundred three.
Page 40, Chapter 20
The fungi is alive which weirds out Mario inexplicably. Did he forget what Kingdom he’s in? Well I guess it is alarming to have a mold issue inside your body. He gets across the cavern and spots a starman item.
Reward: one-hundred points, starman item
Splits: page 9s
Path: form page 98
Page 42, Chapter 21:
Mario smashes the blue shell to make Yoshi fly uncontrollably for a wild ride. Eventually Mario slides into a tunnel.
Splits: page 7
Path: from page 57
Page 44, Chapter 22:
Things are unsteady in that tail section. You know what they say about it being bumpy in the back.. Mario decides he needs to get the bottle to Luigi quickly. Also there’s an unrelated puzzle.
Puzzle: spot the difference (error?)
Splits: page 28 (even), page 117 (odd)
Path: from page 54
Puzzle solution: You are counting how many images of Bower match. I think they borked this because the answer is ‘odd’ one one-hundred seventeen but your actual eyes will disagree. I only saw two. Page twenty-eight is a dead end.
Page 46, Chapter 23
Yoshi shrinks just as you’d expect to happen and that’s bad.
Game over!
Path: from page 64
Page 47, Chapter 24:
Mario needs to get the daisy but it’s far and Yoshi and Luigi have a foot near him. Which to use? Use the puzzle.
Puzzle: maze
Splits: page 33 (Luigi), page 60 (Yoshi)
Path: from page 96
Puzzle solution: Luigi and Yoshi have different rules to navigate the mushroom maze. You’ll find that Luigi’s path leads to the flowers. Yoshi is a dead end.
Page 50, Chapter 25:
Wigglers show up as Mario reaches a dead end at a valve. Does he have a tool for this blockage?
Splits: page 61 (wrench), page 12 (no wrench)
Path: from page 52
Puzzle solution: You need the wrench from page seventy-six or else!
Page 52, Chapter 26:
The yellow shells cause an earthquake inside of Yoshi which jumbles everyone, but mostly the bad guys. Mario sees some score opportunities. See the puzzle.
Reward: various score
Puzzle: maze
Splits: page 50
Path: from page 57
Puzzle solution: This time the score doesn’t paywall a path, it’s just for score. Carefully navigate the plates on the koopa’s backs containing one to five coins. Once you hit a number you can’t go to a lower one. Mostly stick to the left to earn a max of thirty-six. Be warned you need a wrench soon.
Page 54, Chapter 27:
Luigi whines about the berries smell enough to give Yoshi ‘hicoughs’ as they put it. Mario is rocked to the tail where he finds the shrinking medicine.
Reward: medicine bottle
Splits: page 44
Path: from page 92
Page 56, Chapter 28:
They don’t trust that doctor so they get Yoshi to freak out and run. Bowser reveals that the threelip was the key and then scrams. We are curiously not told how he ‘exits’ Luigi’s body so quick.
Game over!
Path: from page 36
Page 57, Chapter 29:
Mario handles the sumo bros, only for the rest of the army to arrive guns blazing. The koopas in fact are literally shooting shells from their shells at you. No not bullet shells, their shells shell out shells.. Use the puzzle to know what the blue ones will do (or remember Super Mario World and save the time).
Puzzle: Word search, just a hint
Splits: page 52 (yellow shell), page 42 (blue shell)
Path: from page 24, page 117
Puzzle solution: It’s just a simple word search with a word bank actually provided for once. You’ll get the phrase “they make him fly” on page forty-two. Page fifty-two will need the wrench where as forty-two just moves you along. I wish I could tell you what they intend to be the right path but I can’t, just the ‘just a hint’ descriptor.
Page 60, Chapter 30:
Mario hitches a ride on Yoshi’s foot only for him to fall asleep, maybe for days!
Game over!
Path: from page 47, page 82
Page 61, Chapter 31:
Mario uses the wrench to get though the valve and eventually to Luigi’s boot.
Splits: page 6
Path: from page 50
Page 62, Chapter 32:
Bowser shows up. Yeah, way to make yourself more vulnerable by shrinking down to the size of the person you’re trying to destroy.. Mario begs Luigi to take the medicine in a hurry, so much so Luigi grabs him and eats him instead. Umm, what a twist?
Splits: page 36
Path: from page 6
Page 64, Chapter 33:
Dr. Drake has meds but can’t remember who they are for, Luigi or Yoshi. Use the puzzle.
Puzzle: sequence
Splits: page 49 (Yoshi), page 10 (Luigi)
Path: from page 110, page 66
Puzzle solution: Pretty easy, Luigi comes next and thus he drinks the potion. (They use the wrong image here for him however). A better question is why shrinking is needed to solve this issue and not vomiting? Too gross? Not with other events we’ll deal with.
Page 66, Chapter 34:
Mario finally questions FC who turns out to be Bowser in their midst. He escapes and they call Doc Drake. On this path he’s again called a quack by the King this time. Who is he to talk? You’ll understand why I say such if you are familiar with how he behaves typically in these books. Everyone discuses the cherry issue. Take your penalty and move on.
Buffet: lose 50 points
Splits: page 64
Path: from page 88
Page 68, Chapter 35:
Mario clears the drain, effectively working as a laxative (told ya parts are gross) so let’s just move along now. He goes into a tunnel next.
Splits: page 76
Path: from page 108
Puzzle solution: This is an alternate path to the wrench, except with no large point opportunities, bu you do get the flower that you need for very late story.
Page 69, Chapter 36:
Predictably Peach and company can’t keep Yoshi very still for long. Yoshi gulps down some soda and washes away Mario deeper inside. Mario cuts on his lead lamp at a three-way junction. Use the puzzle to learn specifically what you’ll need for the center option.
Puzzle: decipher
Splits: page 20 (left), page 98 (right), page 83 (center)
Path: from page 112
Puzzle solution: You have some words to unscramble, all Mario related. They are ‘wrench’, ‘luigi’, ‘feather’, ‘plumber’, ‘mushroom’, and ‘bowser’. You’ll need the plunger as the item needed in the center, so that’s the best way right? It’s actually not that simple if you see the optimal path at the far bottom of this guide, but it will lead to the fire flower item. So if you (spoiler) don’t have the flying suit you kind of have to use that. Just know that the plunger you’ll need to go that way is only obtainable at a point before this, there are no loop backs or resets here. Page twenty will lead to the wrench eventually and points. Page ninety-eight will lead to the star that may be needed depending on your choices later.
Page 72, Chapter 37:
Mario didn’t find the medicine bottle so this will take a while. Should it though? I’m inclined to disagree as the medicine bottle was never shrunk, minor plot hole, and further more Luigi should be able to help more in this thing. Well I’m rambling now. Whatever.
Game over!
Path: from page 6
Page 73, Chapter 38:
Yoshi’s teeth, the white mountainous things Mario was wondering about, close in on him and he’s in deep trouble without a rope.. I mean floss to hang on.
Game over!
Path: from page 112
Page 74, Chapter 39:
Mario ties to stop Yoshi by giving him a stomach ache, also hitting his brother a couple of times by mistake. Use the puzzle for a clue of your fate.
Puzzle: sequence, decipher, just a hint
Splits: page 24
Path: from page 92
Puzzle solution: The next number in the sequence is ‘4’ so count every four letters. It says “koopas in grapes” which will make sense later. Oh, and get ready for a hazard.
Page 76, Chapter 40
Mario lands somewhere, finding whole objects like toy cars Yoshi not only ate, but has been incapable of digesting for some time now. Someone give that dino a check up! Mario finds a useful tool and Yoshi must have eaten a pipe too, because one helpfully leads out of there.
Reward: one-hundred points, Wrench item
Splits: page 92
Path: from page 116, page 68
Page 78, Chapter 41:
Yoshi is ticked off at being manhandled so badly. He runs off and presumably is never found again.
Game over!
Path: from page 88
Page 79, Chapter 42:
Mario decides to drink the second dose of the shrinking potion to get ingested, find the first one they lost, then bring it to the normal sized Luigi still trapped in Yoshi and who can’t be communicated to until then. Got it? Mario can bring only one item with him. Use the puzzle.
Reward: 100 points, flying suit OR plunger
Puzzle: maze
Splits: page 112
Path: from page 10
Puzzle solution: You just pick a spot to land on to get either item randomly. This will affect later options for you but for now both are fine. (See optimal path)
Page 80, Chapter 10:
Mario correctly recognizes the fungi is living but incorrectly thinks that the brown spots sound better. Nope, turns out that’s the ticklish parts. Yoshi’s guffaw knock Mario into a pipe.
Splits: page 92
Path: from page 98
Page 82, Chapter 43:
Mario over hears how to help himself from Doc Drake, but how can he get to that convenient patch of magic daises growing right there?
Splits: page 17 (flying suit), page 60 (no suit)
Path: from page 86
Puzzle solution: have the suit!
Page 83, Chapter 44:
Mario lands on Luigi’s head. Of course being stuck there the younger brother has missed out on the whole convoluted ‘shrink and rescue’ plan going on. Mario falls to the bottom of Yoshi’s stomach where there’s a flower. Use the puzzle to know what it is.
Reward: fire flower
Puzzle: decipher, just a hint
Splits: page 108
Path: from page 69
Puzzle solution: Cross out shapes according to the directions. You have the option to pick up the ‘fire flower’. Kind of needless unless they were tying to psyche you into thinking this book contains ‘items of doom’ (see glossary on main page), but thankfully this book DOESN’T. Just know you need the plunger coming up.
Page 86, Chapter 45:
Mario gets on Yoshi’s boots then tickles him into stomping the bad guy’s brains out.
Splits: page 82
Path: from page 26
Page 88, Chapter 46:
So they let FC stuff his mystery pills down Yoshi’s throat. Things seem off. Well, more than usual. Now he says eagerly that they need to turn Yoshi upside down. Use the puzzle to end this madness.
Puzzle: Other, decipher (error)
Splits: page 78 (upside down), page 66 (right side up)
Path: from page 29
Puzzle solution: Answer the quiz questions about story events until this point. They first is easy but the second question about Luigi and pizza could be two or three depending on what they consider ‘carrying’ to be. You use the number to know what shapes the color in the mosaic like puzzle. Problem to reveal an abstract image of Yoshi right side up, the answer, you need to color BOTH the triangles and squares so something is screwy here. Go to sixty-six.
Page 90, Chapter 47:
Mario is about to be mashed in an industrial like grinder thing known as ‘digestion’. He narrowly escapes.
Buffet: lose one-hundred points
Splits: page 92
Path: from page 20
Page 92, Chapter 48:
Mario finds Luigi in the next ‘room’ of Yoshi. Not sure of the anatomy here either.. Finally he can explain the plan to his brother when Yoshi begins to move. Outside Peach fails to keep him from a garden where there are some kind of boomer berries. Use the puzzle to know if the purportedly stinky things are okay.
Puzzle: other, decipher
Splits: page 74 (stop yoshi), page 54 (don’t stop)
Path: from page 90, page 76, page 18
Puzzle solution: You have more trivia on the story so the numbers will be three, one, and zero to get a total of four. Now count backwards four letters from what they give you. “Smelly berries are okay” is what you’ll get. They only hard part is that they are vague on which way to count. Is it forwards for all letters? Backwards? A mixture? Well turns out it’s only counting back but still that cost me extra time over thinking it. Anyway go to fifty-four for an item you’ll NEED. Plus page seventy-six is a more immediate hazards. Just don’t do that.
Page 96, Chapter 49:
Mario resorts to a smoke signal using his fire flower against Bowser and crooks. Meanwhile Doc Drake knows that some magic daisies will fix Mario. Peach concludes that Mario needs to navigate to them himself or they’ll squash him. Smart girl… maybe.
Reward: one-hundred points
Splits: page 47
Path: from page 26
Page 98, Chapter 50:
Mario tries the right path, ending up somewhere near Yoshi’s back where there are two kinds of weird patches everywhere. Use the puzzle to know where to step.
Puzzle: get a ruler
Splits: page 40 (can’t do it), page 18 (can do it)
Path: from page 69
Puzzle solution: You are given and image with fungus and brown spots and you must divide the images so that there are more fungus spots than brown patches on each side. You can’t do it. Remember that they don’t count equal amounts of spots as workable so go to page forty for an item. The other way will lead to a junction that you must be ready for item wise.
Page 102, Chapter 52:
Mario is whisked away and the flying suit doesn’t help. Attentive writing here as you can only get in this situation by not having the plunger which means automatically you must have gotten the suit instead.
Game over!
Path: from page 108
Page 103, Chapter 53:
They let Yoshi eat and then… jump cut to Luigi being spit out. Everyone is ecstatic but where’s Mario? Oh yeah. See I love how they come up with a better solution despite Mario still being stuck in the now outdated shrink and rescue scheme… Luigi take the flower and Mario is ejected but too tiny to spot in the field. Use the puzzle to know what he needs.
Reward: one-hundred points
Puzzle: maze, decipher, just a hint
Splits: page 26
Path: from page36
Puzzle Solution: Trivially easy maze with the phrase “magic daisies”. Now move on. This isn’t a hint or anything, just a sneak peak of what’s ahead. You will need the flower or flying suit though.
Page 106, Chapter 54
The party continues to go south as Yoshi’s cake is ruined and the dino keeps eating in a frenzy. To top it off, Luigi’s obliviousness gets him swallowed whole.
Splits: page 29
Path: from page 1, page 32
Page 108, Chapter 55:
Mario floats on a stream of grape punch when a water fall comes up. In to the deep he goes when he spots a drain that’s clogged up. Gotta feel sorry for Yoshi’s insides. Do you have the proper tool?
Splits: page 68 (plunger), page 102 (no plunger)
Path: from page 83
Puzzle solution: Normally this might be insidious but page sixty-nine explicitly warns of this item check, so fair game!
WIN Page 100, Chapter 52:
Everything is well except Bowser being chased by an ant. Hey, he really shouldn’t have stooped to Mario’s level, literally. The party will go on apparently and more astonishingly some of them still have appetites even after all of this. We just hope Yoshi got those ‘pipes’ of his looked at eventually.
Splits: -
Path: from page 17, page 33
Page 110, Chapter 56
They call the doc. Right away he diagnoses that a purple berry from BOWSER was eaten and they trace it to Fungus Cap. FC reveals that he was Bowser all along. He meant to crash the party but didn’t set up Luigi specifically as a casualty, so that younger plumber really should have been paying attention. Bowser escapes.
Reward: 10 points
Splits: page 64
Path: from page 29
Page 112, Chapter 57:
Mario shrinks down and immediately realizes this was a dumb idea. Too late however because Peach drops him into Yoshi’s mouth. Use the puzzle for a hint on something. Maybe..
Puzzle: decipher, just a hint (error?)
Splits: page 73 (platform), page 69 (tongue)
Path: from page 79
Puzzle solution: To to page sixty-nine. The puzzle says something about a ‘tool box’ but really I couldn’t tell what the rest of it was trying to say. Whatever it’s trying to tell you isn’t even useful assuming it does involve tools of some sort because there is a wrench item in the book but you likely will get it and once you do have it you may not need to even use it.
Page 116, Chapter 58
Mario chooses the blue bug route, falling down a mysterious chute.
Splits: page 76
Path: from page 20
Page 117, Chapter 59:
Mario waits out the worse of the hiccoughs and makes a move when it’s safe. Now though, there are more enemies inside of Yoshi and not his immune system, because that would actually make sense, but instead Bowser baddies. Mario stows the bottle way safely then faces the sumo bros.
Reward: one-hundred points
Splits: page 57
Path: form page 44
Page 119, Chapter 60:
Mario crosses the lake no problem. He approaches a wall and staircase with enemies. Too many to handle.
Splits: page 5 (star), page 16 (no star)
Path: from page 13
Puzzle solution: have the star from page forty or else.
**Summary and Concluding thoughts: This book, well, what to say? The errors and puzzle issues are distracting even by the standards of this series, but underneath that we have a sort of interesting adventure, to say the least. Yes, it’s an idiot plot (more later) and yes, kinda gross but the writing is also really good here between Mario and crew. You don’t often see the extra cast of Peach, the King, Luigi, and Toad all the time but when you do it’s humorous, even if in an eye rolling way. Now the bad parts with the theme? The main conflict is painfully contrived, from the way Luigi gets eaten by Yoshi to the scheme they come up with to get Luigi out, (shrinking down Mario to go inside of Yoshi and find the shrinking medicine to also shrink Luigi and then somehow get out together) Furthermore later in the story everyone uses their brain while Mario is busy battling the meatballs in Yoshi’s stomach (not an actual story event but close enough) and realize that they just need to induce vomiting and problem solved. Not really of course because Bowser is still behind it all and Mario is still tiny but you get my point.
Now on to the puzzle design and game structure. This book defied a couple of my expectations. First of all, it is item-focused, which in my guides is often not a good sign but here it works. They have an early puzzle that determines which of two items you can get and it is a random pick-and-choose puzzle. There are no loopbacks for this. This doesn’t bode well typically but they bothered to structure the book so that both paths can allow you victory. That being said things are linear too. There are just a couple of events you can experience on different playthroughs but at least the short ending sequence is different depending on which item you use. Otherwise, you hit a lot of the same points and there are again ZERO loopback paths. Very atypical actually but I guess that would be weird inside of a body and not in an environment like normal. It somewhat reminds me of Book #12 Brain Drain in that you are always moving forward. What’s alarming are puzzles that don’t tell you what to do once you solve them. You’ll notice in the puzzle run down there are a lot of ‘Just a Hint’ type puzzles. (See main page for explanations of puzzle types)
Scoring? The point opportunities are a little disproportionate at times. You generally gain or lose points in base 100s yet a couple of puzzles reward very low or very high amounts. Strange. The item checks are unforgiving too, but the book does give hints often before these and you are allowed to make a couple of mistakes, especially earlier in the book, at the expense of some points before you’re allowed to move on. The only hard lockdown on a necessary item check is the medicine bottle. Every other item is only needed depending on your path. Overall there’s kind of limited replay here but for a first read through I think this is enjoyable if the errors aren’t too distracting. 3.5/5
**Optimal path:
This will give the score of 1166, just below their max threshold. Hmm. I might need to revisit this. Remember that there are no loop backs, so we don’t have that pesky issue of counting the same score on duplicate page visits. Let me show the path and then bring out some key points.
START- page 1 (ten pts)- page 106- page 29- page 110 (ten pts)- page 64- page 10 (fifty pts)- page 79 (one-hundred pts, flying suit)- page 112- page 69- page 20 (five-hundred thirty pts)- page 116- page 76 one-hundred pots, wrench) 9 page92- page 54 (medicine bottle)- page 44- page 117 (one-hundred pts) – page 57- page 52 (thirty-six pts)- page 50- page 61- page 6 (one-hundred pts)- page 62- page 36- page 103 (one-hundred pts)- page 26- Page 86- page 82- Page 17 (two-hundred pts)- page 100 WIN
It seems the following can’t be escaped: the flying suit OR fire flower, the medicine bottle, and the wrench. The star however may be skipped. We chose the flying suit path because it allows the mega high scoring page twenty puzzle. I did put together a path with the plunger but it didn’t score as high because of that.
**Puzzle Run Down:
21 puzzles, lots of logic and math and mazes. Unfortunately they don’t at times convey what the correct split is to follow and a couple have errors outright. Let me just show and then explain:
Maze iii
Logic, sequence iii
other, decipher I
decipher ii, just a hint I
Maze, math
get a ruler
word search
spot the difference
sequence, decipher, just a hint
math, logic
maze, decipher, just a hint
Okay, to count this you count the word first then the additional ‘i’ digits are next. For example there are FOUR pure maze puzzles here (the first listed). Nothing here wowed me and some where repetitive as well. The over all difficulty here is very easy and while this isn’t always the puzzle’s fault, an alarming amount don’t give you clear answers as to the right path to choose!
Book Goals:
- Hopscotch with the fungi: Very strange phrasing on their part. There are jumping puzzles certainly but none involving points (the reason why they’d be recommending this). I guess on Page ninety-eight there is a fungus puzzle. It gives eventually the star and one-hundred points, yet locks you out of a higher scoring path. Overall, this ‘hint’ is blah.
-Ride the Micro Dolphins: Other puzzles score better but on page thirteen it sure is entertaining so read it I guess..
-Figure out which color shell to smash: Well I’m not even sure the right path because both are pretty neutral. I guess breaking the yellow shell on page fifty-two can lead to a couple more points.
Last edit: 11/25/21 (not creation date), 5/10/22 fixes