Monday, May 28, 2012

E4: Get Lost


This is not a difficult game to play. I do not need to tell you how to play it, unless you’re like “OH NO MY ARROW KEYS DON’T WORK!” Then I could be like, “Whoa, bro. Clam down. You just have to click the arrows in the bottom left of your screen.” Past that, though, there is not a lot of mastery involved in J. Allen Henderson's “adventure game with a twist,” Get Lost.

But simple, my friends, can be beautiful. Or in this case, witty, sarcastic, delightful, confusing, and bizarre. It’s really great.

Get Lost is a point-and-click visually, aurally, and gamerly enhanced ode to the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, which I’m sure were a part of your rich childhood. Well, now can enjoy them anew in your maybe-not-so-rich adulthood (though who am I to judge?). Do you want to be a man? A woman? A rabbit? It’s your choice! All the characters, though their lives be nasty, brutish, and short (à la Hobbes), had a whole bunch fascinatingly diverse and twisted paths to explore. Maybe this time you should go northeast? Southwest? Up? Left? You will get lost. But it’s okay. That’s life.

Now listen, the game looks great. It really does. Everyone has a moustache. There are many candy stores. You can click on things and they do stuff. It’s cute and weird and maybe you’ll like it, too. On top of that, it sounds great. Really excellent use of piano as a sound effect paired with just the right music to match every scene. Every once in a while you run into some out-of-place 8-bit aspect of the world, which is charmingly and frankly described in the narrative as “8-bit” and are accompanied by some rambunctious action-game chip tunes.

Like any good game, there aren’t very many repercussions when you die. Sometimes you go back to the beginning, but come one. It’s a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. That’s really not so bad. And all of the narrative descriptions, including those of your deaths, are blunt and sarcastic. I greatly appreciate this.

Along the left side of your screen, you’ll see two bars: one labeled “bugs” and one labeled “eggs.” For a long time, I thought these were for absolutely nothing at all and were just some odd joke from the game designer. This was funny. Then I found an egg and realized they were actually for something, but just barely. This was also funny. Maybe I should keep playing and find them all, if that’s a thing. Maybe something cool will happen. I almost hope that nothing happens. That would be brilliant.

All in all, this game was great. Every time I started getting bored, something delightfully unexpected happened, often resulting in my demise. This game truly has fabulous and inspired writing. You should play it. If you find all the eggs and bugs, tell me what happens, okay?




My Rating:
I could…
a. be a rabbit, I guess.
b. Take it
c. Leave it

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