Milliways: the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

In some ways, the author of Milliways has put themself into a bind. The original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy might be the most popular and cherished of the Infocom canon, and so any sequel has a lot to live up to. On the other hand, so much time has passed since the first game’s release—and expectations of an official sequel all but dashed decades ago—no one really expects this new effort to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a video game legend. (Starship Titanic, the closest we’ll see to a Douglas Adams sequel, paled in comparison to Hitchhiker’s, and it had graphics, a music score, and a full development team.)

Up front, I’ll say this: Having some familiarity with the source material is a basic requirement to play Milliways, be it the Hitchhiker’s books or radio shows or the 2005 movie. Neophytes will probably find themselves rather confused as they’re thrust into situations that Douglas Adams fans are all too familiar with.

The game opens on Magrathea, the planet-building planet. As with the first game, you’re there with the usual gang—Ford, Zaphod, Trillian—but they’ve left you alone with Marvin while they stay busy elsewhere. You start with a copy of the Guide, your dressing gown, and a Babel fish implanted in your ear while standing before a giant crater filled with whale guts. (Again, this all makes perfect sense if you’ve read the books.)

The game is organized in spoke-wheel fashion. You’re transported from scene to scene (each opening in darkness that gradually fades to a blur) where you must solve a puzzle or six to move on. The game gleefully self-declares as old-school Cruel on the Zarfian scale, and you do have die several times in several places before the shape of certain puzzles begin to make sense. Fortunately, UNDO is available. Saving the game periodically is a must.

What’s working here? Hitchhiker’s fans will find most boxes checked. The game touches on the major elements of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Marvin is your recurring companion, as is the Guide, although I wish the repertoire of responses for both was a bit larger. The scenes move briskly enough. If I found myself jammed up on a puzzle, the in-game Invisiclues-style hints pointed me on my way.

Asking a game whose source material deals in Improbability Drives to have “logical” puzzles sounds like a failure on my part to get the point of the joke, but a few of the set-ups and solutions left me scratching my head.

More decisively, I found the game lacking in tone and humor. The Infocom game wasn’t a substitute for reading the book, but it gave you the chance for a few hours to be Arthur Dent, Douglas Adams’ walking, talking dunk tank.

Milliways is more business-like in tone, mostly concerned with giving you enough information to move around and play through the puzzles. There are a couple of moments that gave me a laugh, such as when carrying a towel granted access to higher class areas…because it made me look like a waiter. (Again, it helps to have read the books to fully appreciate the joke.)

Other details came off as missed opportunities, such as the menu of the eponymous restaurant:

>EXAMINE MENU
MENU
… There is nothing left on it. Hmm.

So much could have been done here! After all, this game was inspired by the same books that laid out bistromathics, the number-bending relativity found only in gastro-pubs. The menu response in Milliways could likewise have been a great chance to riff.

I’m not expecting the author (or any author) to match Douglas Adams’ wit. But I did expect a fuller nod toward Adams’ acerbic satire of our status-obsessed, techno-laden culture (which today, if you think about it, makes the early 1980s look like The Flintstones).

There were a few polish problems, mostly typos and disambiguation problems:

>EXAMINE CAR
It leads to the car.

In particular, it appeared that if I could not carry any additional items, it would botch a convoluted puzzle concerning kitchen cupboards. (I didn’t fully diagnose the problem, but had to resort to using a save point to get past it.)

It was wistful to hang out with Marvin again. It’s been so long since I’ve read the books, I’d all but forgotten about the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, one of those Adamsian devices that is of the ages. He built a rather colorful universe. Milliways offers a nice peek back into Adams’ creation, but is shy of actually living within it.