CGDC #7 – Jim Munroe’s Roofed!
February 21, 2010Jim Munroe is the guy who did Everybody Dies in 2008’s IF Comp. I suspect if he hadn’t been up against what is arguably the most lovable game in history (and I will argue that, if you want me to, and my entire argument will consist of it’s yours, wallaroo), he would have won.
Dude can write, see. Everybody Dies reminded me of a Douglas Coupland novel, except not Hey Nostradamus because Hey Nostradamus sucked and was awful. (Sorry, Douglas Coupland. I forgive you for saying you were too busy to go to Denny’s with us and then blogging about how you ate pizza alone in your hotel room, though, if that helps.) Oh, and it had pictures! Adorable pictures of fish!
I am excited to play this game, is what I’m trying to say here.
[spoilers begin here]
Great, my brother got us both trapped on a roof. I guess that’s what makes this an escape game instead of a, you know, doing-something-that-isn’t-escaping game.
Escaping, by the way? Not necessarily the theme I would have chosen. I mean, it’s something IF newcomers can get their heads around easily, but it sort of limits the freedom for a story to really take off, you know? You’re in a situation, you get out of the situation, story over. People still got all kinds of creative with it – thinking The Usher, Into the Open Sky, Lurid Dreams off the top of my head, but… yeah. Also the fact that Flash escape games are an entire genre with their own set of traditions and stereotypes invites people to simply rewrite one using a parser, which is not the most exciting use of the format. (Sorry, Riff.)
Fucking Pachenko brothers!
These cucumbers behave… oddly.
Actually, the whole future is kind of nuts. Apparently my brother and I make a living searching rooftops for spider silk, which we have to put in a special containment unit so we don’t burn ourselves on it. Oh, and Canada sucks now. Sorry, Canada.
Whoo, scored a whole mess of spider silk. Now how do we get down?
Oh, I can make Anton mad by asking him about the Pachenko brothers, and when he’s mad he can lift the plank. Yeah, okay, that one I might have figured out myself, eventually.
The relationship between the brothers is really cute. Awww, I shouldn’t yell at him for having lost the rope. He’s just mad at me for almost dying.
That was sweet. I liked it. I’m glad we got a lot of spider silk.
Pissy Little Sausages 
Huh. I got the plank out of the dirt myself without making Anton mad long enough to do it, and then I quit because I couldn’t figure out what to do. Also because I’m a moron and had completely forgotten that IF games often include a “help” function, and also didn’t notice the “walkthrough” button sitting right there. Was I almost done?
If you’d gotten both chunks of spider silk already, yeah.
How’d you get the plank out of the dirt?
I got no chunks of spider silk. I had the plank and was basically wandering around with no flipping idea what to do.
In an attempt to piss Anton off enough to get him to do something useful, I threw a cucumber at him. He seemed to calm down quick, but the effect made me think it might help to throw a cucumber at the plank. It did in fact help.
So: Yay multiple solutions!