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The HeBGB Horror!

by Eric Mayer profile

About the Story

"What ever happened to those legendary punk rockers The Laughing Kats? If you can discover the terrible secret lurking in the HeBGB rock club you might just become a star." [--blurb from Competition '99]

Page Update History

  v.6: 06-May-2022 22:46 - Paul O'Brian (Current Version) - Edit Page - Normal View
Changed external review links
v.5: 06-May-2022 22:46 - Paul O'Brian
Changed external review links
v.4: 16-May-2008 19:44 - Eric Mayer
Changed author
v.3: 02-May-2008 12:40 - Paul O'Brian
Changed external review links
v.2: 27-Feb-2008 21:21 - David Welbourn
Changed description
v.1: 16-Oct-2007 01:49 - IFDB
Created page

1 Off-Site Review

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

The game combines the trappings of the Seventies New York punk rock scene with the sort of Lovecraftian pastiche that seems to have become all the rage in IF since the success of Anchorhead.

I'm an avid rock music fan, so the former theme grabbed me immediately. The Lovecraft stuff, on the other hand, gets old pretty fast. Mayer obviously knows and loves the music, and the emphasis is on the New York punk scene -- these themes could have sustained a game easily on their own. As I played through The HeBGB Horror!, I found myself really enjoying the punk parts, and wishing that the various "eldritch horrors" and such could have been edited out. I'm not sure how much the game wanted to parody CBGB, or how much of an homage it intended for the Lovecraft bits to be, but I think it may have achieved the opposite of its ambition, as the music parts felt mainly like homage, while the Lovecraftiana, with its various generic rats, tentacles, and gibbering masses, felt more like a parody.


See the full review

Game Details

Language: English (en)
Current Version: 2
License: Freeware
Development System: Alan 2
Baf's Guide ID: 622
IFIDs:  ALAN-62E7332F424EB43B78F74F1F5826F548
ALAN-54EA3DB9F8429EFDFE221A6397E7A031
TUID: sjcl3dxizsq4nxkv