I think I am fairly along in this game, but stuck at a mini-game that I don't understand. It is where you drag some perfume droplets through a maze from a source to two bottles. There are nodes in the maze that interact with them as you drag them along the way. (I'm not sure why, or what this interaction is ~ part of the problem.) You can choose to interact with a lot of the nodes or skip nearly all of them.

It looks like you start with seven units of this perfume essence. Of the two bottles on the right of the puzzle, one is marked "1 x times" and the other "2 x times" or something like that. It is not clear whether this means you need to DEPOSIT one drop to the first bottle and two drops to the second; another option is that it could mean find a route where you only LOSE one drop getting to the first and two to the second ~ this is the other part of the problem.

In any case, I can drag the droplets through the maze without exhausting the quantity available, either way; in fact, it actually will go UP. But this doesn't solve whatever the mini-game is asking me to do. Does anyone know what the point/goal of this puzzle is? I know you can't understand this query without having played the game. Hopefully, someone else has and can help.

Even when I looked for a WT, it still did not explain the GOAL, only showed the solution for possible routes for each bottle. I could simply copy that, but I'd much rather know the gist of the problem and solve it myself. I mean, if you aren't "solving" it, skipping the puzzle makes just as much sense. I don't like to skip puzzles. ha ha

Is this the puzzle
http://www.casualgameguides.com/games/ck...Gazebo-Game.jpg

If it is, it looks like you're supposed to draw paths to go through the golden blobs. You start with 8 units of fluid, and each time you pass through a golden blob (dispersal unit) you decrement by one unit. By the time you get to the top perfume bottle, you should have gone through 7 golden blobs so you have 1 unit of fluid left. You start over for the bottom bottle. By the time you get to the bottom perfume bottle, you should have gone through 6 golden blobs so you have 2 units of fluid left for the bottle.

I also found this on Big Fish regarding the essence puzzle:

Thanks, Jenny, that is the right puzzle, and I think the same WT that I looked up. It also is identical with what shows up in the Game Guide that comes with the game. In neither location is the object of the puzzle explained. The thing is, I was hoping to find an explanation of the puzzle rather than to find a solution to copy.

Jenny, I think I get what you are saying, and I will go back and try to find paths on my own that also will do that, too, to see if they work the same way. I'm just curious.

And BTW, this is a helluva game. I bought the CE in last week's half-price sale. It is pretty conventional, in the familiar style of the rest of the series, and the structure as well as the HO scenes are not innovative, but the graphics are beautifully rendered, there are lots of different scenes, very few cheap shots, and the mini-games are excellent. There were a couple of sliders, but they weren't horrible. Two of the mini-games had instructions that were pretty vague (useless, actually) and the Game Guide only gives you the Solution, so be prepared to twiddle a lot on a couple of them before you can figure out what you are supposed to do, much less solve it. Even looking up a WT on line doesn't help, as they simply repeat what is in the Game Guide already. ha ha Part of the fun, I guess.

I've just finished the main game and started on the Bonus Game. The game is satisfyingly long! There is a LOT of shagging your butt around, to go back to places where you finally can use that item you just found, so you do have to take notes (if you've turned off all the cheats that tell you what to do next), but if you enjoy figuring it out on your own, this is a fun one! There is a Map function that will let you quickly jam to the place you want. I definitely will be replaying this one after some time has passed and I've forgotten the details.

Thank you very much for all of that information about the game, Reenie. It sounds like something I would enjoy. I am sure this will be helpful to other forum members as well.