Renegade Brainwave

There have been a couple of polls over the years for 'games that need more reviews' and this has been on all of them. I loaded it up once a few years ago, but it seemed somewhat overwhelming.

But I'm glad I've finished it now!

This is a goofy, intentionally silly game in the vein of Escape from the Crazy Place. You are a police officer dressed as a Go Go dancer. Your partner is Donald McRonald: clown, pyromaniac, and overall goofy character.

The game map is split into about 9 main locations with a couple of extra ones. Gameplay revolves around bringing items from one area into another and getting Ronald to cooperate with you.

The plot is that something mysterious fell out the sky and crashed into the graveyard, and now so many of the dead and buried are rising up out their graves!

There is background music, which I thought was well-chosen; it felt like the soundtrack to one of those movies within a movie you see when people reference fake black and white horror films, like the werewolf movie in the Thriller music video. It has a lot more character than much of the music I've seen in other IF games.

However, I also found a lot of bugginess. The jelly doughnut was a major problem; I found it in a grave. I took it. Then I took something else in the grave, and it said I took the doughnut. I later gave the doughtnut to Donald, and it said he ate it, but then I still had it in my inventory. Similarly, the hints just went blank when first entered the (Spoiler - click to show)spacecraft. There were also a lot of interactions which may have been bugs and may have not; like when I opened my purse, and (Spoiler - click to show)tried to get something out and died, so I tried giving it to Ronald and told him to open it, then when I had it again I could take stuff out and not die, even though the boa was in there. Similarly, with the main nemesis, (Spoiler - click to show)I first tried doing nothing, and died; then breaking the machine, and died; then going through the light, and died; then talking, and that just gave a normal response. So I tried attacking the dog herself and got mind controlled away. So things were kind of chaotic. There are also several typos, mainly missing quotes when a sentence has a dialogue tag in the middle.

The characters and writing are funny and high quality, and the music really helps the ambiance. I enjoyed a lot of the puzzles, too. I wonder if that's why there are so few reviews; the game is good enough that no one would give it a 'this sucks, don't try this' review, but tricky enough to finish that people who like it often aren't able to see the end. However, I should note that as of writing this in April 2024, this game has a lot of 4-5 star ratings, while I'm giving it a 3-star rating, so my experience may be atypical.