Game:

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 20:38

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What is I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream?

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is a Point-and-Click Adventure Game based on a short story of the same name by legendary Sci-Fi--er, I mean, legendary author Harlan Ellison. Apparently, the game was developed when David Sears or one of the others who approached Ellison asked him "why did AM save these five specific people and torture them for 109 years?" Ellison was apparently taken aback by that because nobody prior to development of I Have No Mouth had ever asked him that, or asked it to themselves in general.

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream sees the player take control of AM's five prisoners, taken to the center of the earth and having been given the gift of immortality to them, and has the player going through moral adventures to help the five characters escape from AM's clutches. Each scenario plays like other Point-And-Click Adventure games of the day, such as Westwood Studios' The Legend of Kyrandia trilogy (https://youtu.be/_cTVUUKkt78). The player character tells their character where to go by clicking on certain points on the screen and they look for clues and objects to help them solve the puzzles of whatever it is they need to do to proceed to the next part of the game.

Graphics-wise, the game is excellent! The screens in each part of the game have excellent and very well done backgrounds, and the character sprites and the object sprites aren't too shabby, either!

Music-wise, the game has some pretty swell tunes, although not as many as the aforementioned Legend of Kyrandia trilogy, but there are a few here and there.

Storytelling, I really can't talk about the game's story without spoiling the original, but I like the ending to the game more than I do the original short story, I think. Funnily enough, Harlan Ellison didn't want the game to have a win condition originally, but the Dreamers' Guild guys wouldn't let him because they said it would be too depressing or something to that effect. Ellison said that it would be a noble effort, and then they raised a 'no. Just...no' on Ellison, and that was that.

Overall, I think it's a fantastic game that still holds up really well, even though most of the people back then said that the game had far too many moon logic puzzles, but I really don't think it does, even though I did get stuck on a few parts. Then again, we have the internet nowadays and what with this game being as old as the Time Before Christ, there are several walkthroughs and Let's Plays that you can watch now to help mitigate the process of solving the puzzles and figuring out what to do.

Before I end this really long description, I would just like to point out the fact that you can play this game on the Steam Deck and using the default setup on the thing, play it and not have any problems whatsoever except maybe when you need to do a mouse click? Funny, that.

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