Episode in the Life of an Artist

I've played this game -- or attempted to play it -- twice, and the last time around I was up to 160 turns without a single point. Usually if I reach 100 turns with no points (assuming there are points), that's my signal to quit in frustration. I stuck around for a few more turns to see if I had missed something. Consulting the walkthrough shows that indeed, I had missed something. It turns out that in the fourth scene, everything hinges upon one completely non-obvious command. If you intuit it, then apparently the rest of the game opens up into wherever it goes; if you don't, then you're left to scratch your head.

Now with that out of the way, I think you'll probably be scratching your head the majority of this game. It's not that the character's weird outlook prevents you from discovering things; it's not even that what he experiences makes no sense; it's that the game is not well clued or well paced.

Episode... is split into scenes, which are roughly equivalent to chapters, as this is more of a story than a game. That aside, it seems silly to have a score, but nevertheless, there's a score. You can make it to the fourth scene with zero points by doing what you expect the story wants of you. Shouldn't there have been some points along to way to tell you, "Yes, you're doing things right"? I think only the dedicated or the bored will keep trundling on when there's no rewards in sight, be it score or otherwise. The lack of reward lies in the nature of the game, as well. You can progress from scene to scene without any idea that you've done anything great or ill; so there's this sense of being disconnected from what you're doing. Perhaps that is purposeful, given the character's disconnected outlook from his own life.

Anyhow, I can't say that this game really hit me one way or the other. It seemed to just settle into me with a leaden emptiness, like some generic early grunge song. The main character is a mindless happy sort; the world around him is by turns bizarre and mundane; nothing you do or say seems to matter much. I guess it's not horrible, but mystery meat rarely reaches the heights of culinary praise, and Episode...is probably best described as mystery meat.