We had to talk about it sooner or later, so let's just get it out of the way. Easily the most infamous sluice in all of gaming, Water Temple a bitter, disorienting slog of unmarked and obtuse raising and lowering sequences designed to overwrite the neurons of the plastic-brained youth cursed to receive a Nintendo 64 for Christmas were previously using for algebra with pure sluice action.
Here, let us celebrate the tedium of the sluice, the cornerstone of gaming that no one asked for. Can anyone name a more ubiquitous cliche of video game design that is simultaneously so unremarkable that virtually no documentation (until this blog) has yet existed on the matter? If a game has puzzles in it, there's a good chance you're going to run into a sluice. There's only so many times you can give the player a key to a door that's on the other side of the map before you have to disguise the key as something else. Hydroengineering is rarely the first, second, or even third choice for an alternative framing, but it is reliably the fifth and higher in a startling number of games.
As the only people on earth who care about sluice puzzles, we understand that these simple time-wasters are completely beneath the notice of the average gamer for the most part. That's why we must celebrate The Water Temple, because on this blog we believe that like the swamps of Dark Souls, any part of a game that makes you hate it enough to complain about for the rest of your life is good game design. Gamers don't care about sluices, but they will never forget this one. Sure, it's because the inventory management is hell and the signposting for the central mechanic of the dungeon is completely nonexistent, but the most valuable experience video games can give us is that of being trapped in a creepy and wet place for an uncomfortably long amount of time.
Sluices are never remembered for being good. But a sluice that turns one of the game's already lengthy and complex dungeons into an unending hell immortalized a sluice so humble it does not even bear the name. There's something we can learn here: torturing gamers is great, and we should do it as much as we can.
If no one else we love you, we at SluiceHype will take you into our arms with pride. Rest well. You've done your best.
