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.
If that wasn’t bad enough, ’80s adventure game puzzles were notoriously illogical and you’d have to twist your brain into a pretzel to figure these darn things out. Today, with puzzle solutions just a Google search away, it’s difficult to experience that true desperation.
But this month there’s a chance to test your mettle against a dastardly ’80s adventure game the way God intended: no cheats, no Google searches, and absolutely no walkthroughs.
Developer Woe Industries has announced the AGAT, or “Adventure Game Aptitude Test,” which is “a standardized examination designed to assess if anyone can still complete an ’80s adventure game without a walkthrough.”
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.”
I was able to get an advanced look at the AGAT this week, and I can confirm: funny as this sounds, it’s legit. Woe Industries has built a website that indeed hosts an actual 1980s adventure game (I will not say which one) and uses actual proctoring software called AutoProctor that (using AI) watches your face through your webcam and monitors your browser window to make sure you’re not looking away from the quiz to find answers or using another browser tab to search for a walkthrough.
Move your head too far from the exam on your screen, switch to a different window or open a new browser tab, or even make suspicious noises (it listens through your mic as well) and Woe Industries will be sent a report on your “violations” during the quiz.
I’m sure some of you still in school or university may have had to use proctoring software already, but this is all new to me. I don’t love an AI suspiciously peering at me and evaluating my trustworthiness while I’m playing a game, but this is a pretty fun and ridiculously elaborate experiment Woe Industries has cooked up.
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. For the AGAT, they’re really going above and beyond.
Don’t believe me? The AGAT is only available on February 28, 2026, between the hours of 1:00 and 2:00 pm EST. This is a standardized test, after all. Everyone has to take it at the same time to prevent rampant cheating!
If you choose to take the exam and complete it successfully, you’ll get a nice little diploma, too. Isn’t that better than some achievement? To find out more about the AGAT, and make sure you get a reminder in time for exam day, here’s the official site.
And if you’d like an adventure game warmup, here’s a little adventure game quiz of our own.
