I have no mouth and I must scream (PC)

Despite being on vacation, my wife is giving me some slack when playing games on a smartphone next to her, so I finally managed to finish a game I was planning to play for years. I kept hearing adventure fans recommending this game as one of the best adventures ever made and I couldn't wait to give it a try.

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 by Harlan Ellison. The story takes place 109 years after the complete destruction of human civilization. The game's plot is basically the same concept as in the short story, running off a fairly well known Cold War-fueled sci-fi cliche. America, Europe, and China - scared of each other - create their own super computer beneath the Earth's surface. Somehow, these computers become networked and develop sentience, calling itself AM (which technically stands for Allied Mastercomputer, but also comes from the phrase "I think, therefore I AM"). AM is more than a bit frustrated at its human creators - a being of astounding intelligence, but one that cannot taste, touch, smell or even move, as it's confined eternally to a stationary prison. In retaliation, it nukes the entirety of the planet, save for five selected humans. These not-so-lucky folk are essentially made immortal and kept underground within AM as he tortures them eternally, solely for his own pleasure. 

Everything begins with AM wanting to play a little game - he wants to send each of the five people into their own nightmare world and play up their fears, hoping to demoralize them even further. Although it's obvious that AM's cruelty resembles the concept of hell, the remaining five characters aren't exactly what one could consider typical sinners. Some of them of course are, but that doesn't seem to be the reason why they have been chosen by AM. It seems AM chose them, because he considers them the most fun to torture.

The good

As I already said, the concept is definately one of the game's strongest points. You are basically thrown into this post-apocalyptic hell, and the game does an excellent job at making you feel like a rat in a maze. Each character comes with their own history, flaws and weaknesses, psychological traumas and fears, which is always a big plus in my book (but more on characters later). Many proponents of this game also seem to praise the ability to make choices which effect the game. Choices and consequences are of course always welcomed in a game and one thing that IHNMAIMS does really well, is creating different scenarios where your own morality is put to the test. Namely, the portrait at the bottom-left is also your "spiritual barometer", a measure of character's self-esteem. Whenever you do something good, the character smiles and the portrait turns green; do the opposite and they'll frown slowly turning dark again. Apparently, this mechanic controls the ending you will get, but I would need multiple playthroughs in order to test this out. 

The bad

If only the animations were as good as the graphics.

Although there is a lot to like about this game, it nevertheless suffers from numerous problems. First of all, the game runs in SVGA, and while it looks decent in stills, the animations are awful. Not only are the frames awkwardly animated, but it's choppy and looks quite cheap. There are also various bugs, one of which almost made me redo the whole game, since one of the characters got stuck and couldn't move upon saving my progress. Luckily I had a save backup, so this didn't cause me too much stress, but it is something that needs to be mentioned.

Another problem I had with the game was the voice acting, as well as writing. Namely, you would expect these characters to be written in such a way that they sound traumatized and tortured, but some characters sound completly normal or even happy. Ellen in particular sounds way too cheery and her attitude doesn't fit the setting. Then there is the problem with compartmentalization of content. Basically, you are thrown in 5 completely different scenarios that have nothing to do with each other and it doesn't help things either that these characters - despite interesting backgrounds - never interact with one another. So the whole game feels somehow disconnected and compartmentalized into artificial gaming stages.

I also didn't like the last stage, since only Nimdok could activate the bridge platform needed to progress through the game. If you chose any other character, you would basiclally be sentencing them to death, because any interaction with the wrong object electrifies them. Perhaps this has something to do with the choices I made through the game, or there are other alternatives I missed, but Nimdok was the only useful character in the last stage for me. This brings me to the overarching problem with the design of IHNMAIMS. Namely, way too often you are left blindly guessing what object to interact with, which character to choose, what to do, etc. What even is worse is the fact that wrong choices may result in you being forced to redo the stage from beginning or sacrifice the character. And if you are not wise enough to have numerous save backups, you will eventually get stuck and be forced to redo the whole stage. Needless to say, I am not a big fan of such design decisions and it is these design decisions that unfortunately drag the score down for me.

Characters

"Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise did I, honey?" The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five...or all the 109 years that you've lived down here in my belly, here, underground?"

Gorrister begins his chapter trapped in some kind of hellish dirigible. After landing, he comes across a bar with his name. It's only here that Gorrister can come to terms with what happened to his wife.

"Sometimes I blind you and permit you to wander like an eyeless insect in a world of death. But other times, I wither your arms so you can't scratch your chewed stump of a nose. And I've changed your handsome, strong masculine good looks into the hideous warped countenance of an ape-thing, haven't I, Benny? Do you know why? Can you guess, Benny? Remember Private First Class Brickman in a rice paddy in China? No...? It wouldn't hurt you to remember, Benny. Then you might be able to suffer my torment with a little greater sense of retribution. You might walk a mile in my shoes."

Benny is thrown to an early tribal society who worship and give sacrifices to AM. He wants only food, even though is body is so mangled that he can't even chew it. Only by standing up for a young child can Benny find redemption.

"So think, think about the yellow box, Ellen! Remember the pain? Remember the many caverns in which you felt the pain? Now, now, don't start to cry, it's only pain. Tsk tsk tsk. That's such a sexist stereotype! Just remember the pain, Ellen, and think about how to end it, Ellen, to survive here in the center of my beating heart, my hungry belly, my tightened bowels. But be careful, dear, look around you...the only woman in the center of the earth... and these filthy creatures with you are men. Just a sweet warning, Ellen, my love."

Ellen is outwardly strong, inwardly vulnerable, a smart and capable woman completely traumatized by the color yellow. Her journey takes place in a pyramid, as she begins to unlock the core of AM's subconscious.

"Do they know you're a fraud, Ted? Have you told them there wasn't any money, and no great home on the shore drive, no speedboat and no wonderful cabin cruiser that could sleep twelve and a crew of six? Do they know? Have you let them in your other secrets, Ted? Are they ready to cut you, to torture half as well as I can, just to find out the secrets? Maybe I'll rat you out, sweetheart!"

Ted was the narrator of the original story, but here he's a paranoid, lying sleazebag. Despite his demeanor, he still has strong feelings for Ellen, and pictures himself as her (literal) knight in shining armor. He's thrust into a medieval castle and must not succumb to temptation to save the soul of his beloved.

"How are things in the pastry corps, Nimdok? Tell me again how you saw the smoke from the furnaces and you thought they might roasting chickens? Or don't you want to talk about all that, about your pal, the Good Doktor Mengele? For everyone else, it must be Hell, but it must be Heaven for you, eh, my good friend...we're so much alike... we enjoy the same pleasures, mein good brother."

A Nazi scientist, Nimdok (not his real name - it's just a funny sounding word that AM named him to amuse himself) is thrust back to World War II and his medical experiments at a concentration camp, where he must attempt to find some way to redeem himself. (He can't, not completely anyway - his crimes are too unforgivable.)

Conclusion

For all of its technical issues and "guessing game" design decisions, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream still remains a decent game. The puzzles are well made and at no time did I have to resort to walkthroughs, the concept is intriguing, the plot is for the most part solid and the characters have interesting backgrounds. While I wouldn't call it an essential gaming experience, it is definately a game worth trying out.

Final score: 6/10

I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream Walkthrough