MINI-REVIEW: Bad Milk
(Review copyright 2004, Andrew Plotkin )
The genre of "totally surreal, completely unexplained puzzle game" is common
in text adventures, but not so common in the graphical world. I suppose if
you're making a graphical game, it's a big enough production that you want
to include backstory and character and the whole bit.
_Bad Milk_ is not a big production. I believe it's a portfolio piece from a
web design shop, and they went straight for the totally surreal and the
completely unexplained. There is indeed a story -- you put some seriously
bad milk in your coffee, collapse, and hallucinate puzzles. Or you could
imagine that it's a Dantean vision-quest out of the underworld, confronted
by challenges representing the world's sins. Or something. I don't think
you'd get far with that interpretation.
In one sense, this is not exactly an adventure game. There is no consistent
game world. There are consistent game *elements*, but they don't represent a
physical reality. Several parts of the game present realistic areas --
albeit with very limited actions available -- but those areas are separate
from each other, and no two of them work the same way. (Okay, two of them
do. Let me get back to that.)
So, from that angle, I'm tempted to say this is not an adventure, but a
"puzzle game", like _The Fool's Errand_. A collection of puzzles drawn
together with a thread of story, but with no unified game world.
On the other hand, this is *exactly* an adventure game, because (1) every
action you take is an exploration, and (2) every game response is unique. In
the classical adventure game, your commands are mimetic actions undertaken
by the protagonist; in _Bad Milk_, they're bare user-interface actions,
mouse motions and mouse clicks. But in both cases, you try stuff to see how
the world (or the "world") *works*. _Bad Milk_ presents a "conventional"
range of action (the mouse cursor) but then forces you to stretch it in all
sorts of nonstandard directions. And every time you do, something new and
interesting happens. This is just how adventures work.
(And, to be sure, _The Fool's Errand_ had a vital trace of the same
adventure-like exploration. I'm sure you remember the Three Ships.)
So that is my lecture on theory. _Bad Milk_ is an adventure game without the
mimesis. Lots of nice imagery, too.
As to whether it's a good *game*, well -- I liked it, but it's really tiny.
Five clues to find and use. I finished the whole thing in 55 minutes. Half
of that time was spent mapping two blind mazes, which were a cute idea, but
not cute enough to spend half the game on. If they charged five bucks for
_Bad Milk_, I would cheerfully recommend it for an hour's amusement. But
they're charging $20 plus shipping, which is overpriced, unless you're
really desperate for adventure-like amusement.
(And if you are, I can point you at any number of free Web adventures which
are at least as large. "Crimson Room", "The Mystery of Time and Space",
"Samorost", "D'ni Legacy". _Bad Milk_ would be terrific as a free on-line
amusement. Although it's too bulky for a download -- lots of video snips --
so maybe not.)
Oh, one other quirk: _Bad Milk_ has no save feature. This actually isn't a
big deal, because the only progress you make by solving puzzles is acquiring
clues, and the game doesn't record that you've acquired them. You're
supposed to write them down. So you can start the game, skip the intro, look
at your page of written-down clues, and you're exactly where you left off,
really.
*So:* Nice work, but either way too small or way too expensive.
(This review, and my reviews of other adventure games, are at
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/index.html)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.
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