Collision

Friends, I am acutely aware that I just wrote a 900 word review about a 500 word game (He Knows That You Know and Now There's No Stopping Him); with another Neo-Twiny Jam entry up next (and one that actually uses only half of the already-scant budget) I’ve got a chance to do better.

Collision is a practical joke of a game that proceeds largely in deadpan two-word couplets: you get a spray of three or four super-short phrases each “turn” (“stuck neck”, “roaring engine”, “no voice”), and an expanding number of similarly-terse choices to move things ahead (“look around”, “move hands”, “scream”). This hyper-compressed writing style obfuscates the setup slightly, but only slightly – even if you haven’t paid attention to the cover art, an early bit of narration’s declaration that you have “no pants” and “yellow and black dots on arms” mostly gives the game away.

So it’s clear something terrible is going to happen – though your choices allow you to waste time confirming the obvious – and it’s also clear that you’ll ultimately be powerless to avert it. The comedy of the game arises from the absurdity of making the effort nonetheless, and the bathos of panicking at the realization that there are others stuck in the same predicament as you. It’s a solid gag, and the blinking “failure” you see at the end of each run is a canny lure to get you to try again, at which point the futility of your efforts gets even funnier. Collision is nothing but a one-note gag – it won’t make you look at the world differently, or expand your understanding of what IF can accomplish – but it’s a gag that works, and one I haven’t seen before.

(Under 300 words, that’s gotta be a record for me!)