h2g2 is difficult to the point where it seems like a parody of the genre. Some of it makes stuff like monkey island seem trivial, and I find it hard not to assume that the whole thing was a big joke on the part of Douglas Adams.
Yeah, H2G2 is really, really funny and pretty much impossible. Spend some time fumbling around in each room (there really are some funny responses you should see!) and then refer to a walkthrough to advance to the next room. Save often - although even saving often won't help if you don't get the screwdriver in the first room. It really is a player-hostile game.
It's all very well saying "fumble around in each room" but most of the time you only have a half dozen moves before you die.
There are so many things that you have to do in order not to render the game unfinishable further down the line, and they're thrown in so quickly and so covertly that I cannot believe it isn't satire.
I mean, if you take it as anything apart from satire it's just unforgivably bad game design.
Adams was involved in writing it, and he was definitely into computers. He was the first person in the UK to own an apple machine. He would have almost certainly played zork/dungeon and such games, and therefore being Adams he would not have been able to resist parodying their ridiculous nature.
