Standardized gaming test challenges players to beat an '80s adventure game

Not to sound like an old coot (though I am) but there's at least one aspect of gaming that used to be a lot harder. If you got stuck on an adventure game puzzle in the 1980s, you couldn't just ask the entire world for help: the internet hadn't been invented yet.

You just had to bang your head against that puzzle until you figured it out—the closest thing to the internet was the occasional pay-per-minute hint line or asking the developer for help via mail. Not email, old-fashioned mail. I know it sounds like a cute experiment, and it is—but it's also not kidding around.

"To ensure no walkthroughs or other outside sources are consulted during play, we will be utilizing college exam proctoring software, which will monitor your smartphone usage and browser activity." It's not the first, either. Woe Industries has developed some funny and interesting browser games over the years, like FromSoft Word—it's like Microsoft Word but if you make a typo, you die—and Myst FPS—it's Myst but you shoot a lot of stuff, too.

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