Building comparison
head to head
The Curse of Monkey IslandvsThere Is No Game
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is execution, and it is a single point.
The Curse of Monkey Island
Optimization · Pure Optimization
Comedic point-and-click adventure of Guybrush Threepwood, hand-drawn at its peak.
There Is No Game
Optimization · Pure Optimization
A meta puzzle comedy testing lateral thinking against deliberately misleading interface tricks.
The Curse of Monkey Island leans Optimization (Pure Optimization); There Is No Game leans Optimization (Pure Optimization).
The Curse of Monkey IslandThere Is No Game
Axis by axis
Execution0 vs 1
There Is No Game leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
The Curse of Monkey Island
pointing and clicking only
There Is No Game
Clicking is trivial by design
Reads0 vs 0
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
The Curse of Monkey Island
no adaptive opponent
There Is No Game
The narrator is scripted comedy, not an adapting mind
Variance3 vs 3
Same score on variance - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
The Curse of Monkey Island
puzzle solutions unknown on first play, then fixed
There Is No Game
Surprise fourth-wall tricks are hidden until discovered once
Optimization7 vs 6
The Curse of Monkey Island leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
The Curse of Monkey Island
inventory logic puzzles are fully solvable
There Is No Game
Lateral-thinking puzzles have fixed clever solutions
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.