I couldn't beat this game without the strategy guide because I was like 11, and some of the game's puzzles would be overly esoteric for me even today. But still, my willingness to parse a confusing unofficial (non-Prima) strategy guide to unpack this confounding and achingly beautiful world simply made this masterpiece accessible to me, and thus changed my world forever. Thanks to that strategy guide I played through this game five or six times, each time in a single unbroken sitting. Oftentimes on my dad's laptop in the back seat of the car on long road trips. It was, in 1997, the most effective escape into a strange world that I knew of. One that didn't require me to be good at anything other than reading the instructions.