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Review
A title like this is meant to be catchy and a bit gonzo, and, well, it may be the best GrueScript game I've played that isn't by Robin Johnson, who created it. Not that I'm big on rating stuff, but t's pretty clear the author knew what they were doing as the writing is relatively clear and funny, with the usual ways to die that should make you laugh, and it's pretty clear what roughly to do without being duh-obvious.
The main mystery is that you have a television who doesn't like you. It just simply wants you to plug the cable in, so you can get cable channels, but that kills you. Big problem. Guess it's not just the cable fees that are brutal! To make matters worse, your girlfriend has disappeared. You want to rescue her, but you've hit some hard times lately.
The big hitch is, you have to negotiate with other machines, like a vacuum cleaner and a microwave and other things, first just to get out of your apartment and then to navigate Amanda's. The machines have their own personalities and aren't completely cooperative at first. Your vacuum needs a vacuum bag before it steps aside and takes an item of yours. Amanda's microwave needs to be cleaned. (Both of yours complain about the icky things you put in them.) Amanda's appliances are generally suspicious of you, and the telephone which misses her talking to her friends because she is calling you a lot is particularly demanding. You need to make up for what you've taken, so to speak.
What with your television able to kill you on the first move of the game when you plug the cable in, and the game title, well, it's no surprise that Amanda's disappearance/avoidance has to do with a hostile television of her own. Your apartment and hers are really quite different, but neither is terribly big, and while they have a lot of amusing squalor, there isn't a lot of already-done My Lousy Apartment stuff. The puzzles are also lampshaded, like the utility pole outside her apartment you can't climb, and having to fiddle with your TV in your apartment nicely foreshadows what you need to do with Amanda's. And since GrueScript directs you to the verbs you need, there isn't a whole lot of unnecessary fiddling, and the clicking through isn't particularly tedious. So it's well paced, and I found the climax dramatic and still pretty funny.
This was a really good entry, worthy of its long name, not one of those where it just posted on a long crazy name that makes you laugh for a few seconds and hoped it would coast on jokes you heard before. it also effectively uses the device of, well, people think you're crazy because you talk to machines, but actually you're not, without going overboard or making you yourself look or feel like an idiot. On finishing, I sort of missed the machines I had conversation with, as well as the ways the author asked, hey, how would machines they feel about their roules in a human's life? About being used too much or little? It's wise and clever and gives good laughs.
