Skeletrom Crew On The Loose!

You know, we’re over halfway into the Comp (this is review number 33, but I’ve played a couple more that are awaiting their reviews, plus I tested half a dozen others that I’ll write up after I finish the new-to-me games) and I just realized there’s been a decided lack of games in the wacky-Twine-anthology subgenre. OK, I guess that’s not one of the canonical Treaty-of-Babel-recognized genres, but if you’ve been around the scene you know what I’m talking about: just about every IF event has at least a couple games, usually implemented in default-style Twine, where you get an initial choice that shunts you down one of several short, mutually-exclusive paths. Sometimes there’ll be some simple choice-based gameplay, sometimes it’ll be pretty much linear, but you’re almost always in and out and under ten minutes so it doesn’t matter that much. And then you’re popped back to the beginning to see if you want to sample one of the other options on offer.

There’s not much to the structure, and because of that, I tend to have polarized reactions to these games: their minimalism can provide a wonderful stage for comedy, off-the-wall gags, and intensely poetic turns of phrase that couldn’t easily fit coherently together into a longer work. But that all hinges on pure writerly skill – if the prose isn’t sufficiently punchy, the ideas just a bit on the stale side, the game isn’t providing much to fall back on.

Anyway, that’s the kind of thing Skeletrom Crew is, and turns out it’s the good version of this kind of thing! Here the framing conceit is that a posse of five animated skeletons (well, six, but there’s a pair who are a package deal) have dragged themselves out of the grave one night, and you pick which to follow as they pursue their widely-varied interests. There’s a consistent authorial – well, not voice, since that jumps around a lot, but let’s call it a consistent authorial tone, of good-natured silliness that’s smarter than it needs to be. I can’t say there were too many moments that made me laugh out loud, but I had a smile plastered to my face pretty much the whole time, as every click revealed some new bon mot or funny plot twist.

The game also commits to its myriad bits. Like, the first skeleton on the list was a carpenter in life, so every description from his point of view includes minute details of architectural design and materials; meanwhile, the Romantic poet Aubrey bemoans his lot in richly-adorned prose:

You used to write poems for virgins to murmur as they strolled along the tide-wracked strand. The poems had to be engaging enough to support many hours of murmuring, but not so engaging that the virgins were surprised by waves and carried out to sea. Sure, a couple murmuring virgins carried out to sea was good for your reputation, but after that, people started to make jokes.

I won’t spoil the others, but they’re decidedly more out there than these warm-up vignettes, and just as enthusiastic about embracing the opportunities these idiosyncratic protagonists present (actually, now that I think about it, having a wide range of stuff on offer is a best practice in the anthology-of-interest format – if it’s all going to be one-note, all the starts and stops can feel exhausting). And while it’s the writing that’s the star, the game also makes good use of some ASCII art and surprising interactions – beyond some limited branching, there are a couple of interactive bits that are real highlights and help set the mood of goofy fun.

Does this mean Skeletrom Crew is one for the ages, destined to last as long as its necromantic protagonists? Probably not, but it doesn’t need to; I had a lot of fun exhausting its delights, which made me realize how much I’d been missing this very particular sub-genre. Hopefully the randomizer has just sequenced the others in the latter part of my random shuffle, but even if that’s not the case, at least I’ve had this one lovely example of the form that very much scratches the itch.