I'm kinda stuck on a puzzle. Usually I'd now tell you what the puzzle was and ask for a walkthrough, but my problem is that the puzzle doesn't even exist yet. Been googling around a bit for helpful info, but I mainly end up on Ron Gilbert's site and he isn't helping much either on this specific point and I'm wasting valuable writing time looking for a solution.

Problem is that I don't wanna do another "get item here/use item there" puzzle. I've got enough of that and there will be more. To add some variation I wanna try and do a different style of puzzle, a lever puzzle, or a mechanical puzzle, but that leads me to a way of thinking I can't seem to do. Here's the specific situation:

I need a bunch of ostriches out of my way. They're on an ostrich farm and they get fed every day at five pm exactly. So I'll need to head into the church tower and make the bell ring five times. I'm thinking this needs to be done with a mechanism I could manipulate in a puzzly manner. Getting a hammer and banging the bell is too easy. The game doesn't work with actual time, so going all Medjay and meditate till five o' clock isn't an option. That bell's gonna need to ring five times, wether it's three or not.

I already have access to the church tower, so that can't be puzzlefied and I can bullshit my way through most incosistencies, so adding a space age computer to a medieval belltower is actually an option if need be.

I'm looking for someone who can point me to either a useful resource or someone who imagines stuff like this better than I do. 

Oh, and pretending there will actually some day be a point that credits will roll: You will be credited if you please.

If you need to ring the bell five times consecutively so someone thinks it's five o'clock and feeds the ostriches leaving some part of the farm unwatched and undefended so the character can go in and do something, making it exactly the same type of puzzle would be elegant:

• pull the bell rope and then run away...
• after entering the bell tower by stealth....
• while the priest (and/or other personnel) is out...
• because they rushed out of the church to take care of ...
• a diversion that the player set up nearby

Interesting complications to throw in:

• Use of keys (suitably stolen in a complicated way) to access the bell control room
• Ringing a bell five times isn't instantaneous, the priest could come back before the character is done. Some plausible diversions might turn out to cause too little delay to serve the purpose.

Alternatively, there are silly and complicated unorthodox ways to ring bells:

• throwing objects at them, possibly with a catapult or other device, without causing damage
• tricking someone into ringing them
• if the bells are automated rather than played by hand, hacking into the control computer

3 hours ago, LorenzoGatti said:

Alternatively, there are silly and complicated unorthodox ways to ring bells:

• throwing objects at them, possibly with a catapult or other device, without causing damage
• tricking someone into ringing them
• if the bells are automated rather than played by hand, hacking into the control computer

I'm already three layers deep into this specific questline, so throwing in more comlications isn't something I'm looking at, but these are options to be considered.

The sister (nun?) who runs the church is pretty much why I'm now facing off ostriches, so getting to the church tower is just a matter of "can I?" and "Yeah, see if I care". At least, in the greater picture that makes sense.

Depends on how far into moonlogic you're looking to get, random thoughts that occur:.

-First get the nun/priest/whatever to ring the bells saying what time it is, maybe someone important has a trumpet that signals the bells should be rung now.

-Something could be thrown/fired to hit the bell.

-Something could crash into the church to ring the bell, maybe an angry bull or a vehicle of some sort.

-Make loud thumps on the ground while the ostriches heads are in the ground, as that may be how the bell sounds to them with ears covered by dirt. Perhaps the first thump gets their heads out of the ground to listen for the rest of the bells.

-Sit a huge speaker on the ground and play dubstep and press stop after 5 beats.

-Time rift, jump yourself and the ostriches forward in time an hour just after the 2 o'clock to just before 3 o'clock, they hear 5 and run on over.

-Play a record with a loud bell next to them, damage the record to get the bell to repeat.

-Set up something that will echo the 3 bell tolls back, have to get it just the right distance so that two of them overlap to make 5.

-Get the space age computer to playback a recording of the previous bell (2 o'clock) right after the bell rang for 3 o'clock.

-Require loud noises of any sort while their heads are underground. Anvils falling, cars crashing, a very big door being slammed. Either these could be heard by the ostriches or they could give the ground a large enough thump to make the church bell ring.

-Go full sillymode and require 5 bells of any sort, including bicycle bells, jingle bells and bell peppers, idk how seriously you're making it though.

-Press the "Ring Time" button next to the bell at 3, press the button again but put something in there to silence the sixth hit. If it's a silly game that might be a body part.

Idk, maybe more context could help.

8 hours ago, Old Soul said:

-Something could be thrown/fired to hit the bell.

This one had actually crossed my mind already too. Kind of like a Monkey Island reference. These other options are... out there. ;o)

Context would have been: It's not a serious game, but I'm not just gagging around to reach a conclusion. Everyone just kind of takes the crazy in stride. Like: "Hey, can I get some ostrich feathers so I can help a friend to fly?"  "Sure, help yourself." The only real comment the ostrich farmer has on that is that ostriches are flightless birds. While that's a helpful tip, I'm guessing nobody here's thinking that'll end well.

Anyway, doesn't really matter at this point. I've decided to go with a binary clock puzzle kind of thing. I don't know how hard of a puzzle that'll actually be, as to me those things are like magic, but I just needed to break it up from the item puzzles.

Thanks for the input though.