Edge Valley Bigfoot Society

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 26 Review

Style: Parser
Played: 7/4/26
Playtime: 20m, score 28/50

If I say “Bigfoot” what state in the US do you think of? I was under the impression that this was a pretty straightforward question, but thankfully checked Wikipedia before composing this review. For ME, the answer would have been the Pacific Northwest, likely Washington state. Imagine my surprise to find that while there were significant Sasquatch-related events in Washington and British Columbia in the 1920’s, they were neither the first such, nor the most notorious. California can claim the two, ah, BIG sightings that really captured the imagination of proto-cryptozoologists in the 50s and 60s, the latter being the foundational, jerky Patterson-Gimlin film. The question has been tickling my brain for years now, as no matter where I go in the US, I seem to encounter Bigfoot branding - from the Northwest in Washington to Southeast in the Carolinas, and more recently in Michigan! HE MUST BE MIGRATORY!!!

Turns out there is reason for this: the legend likely came from European settlers and sang off Indigenous folklore to snowball into broad American fascination. Bolstered by so, so many hoaxes. (And, we should acknowledge, the irresistible siren song of Souvenir Sales.) Honestly, I need to back up. I’m here to review a game and I could go ON AND ON about Sasquatch mania. I mean the regional names for Bigfoot alone are pure delight.

Here, we are playing a young Sasquatch, in the lorically classic northwest, escaping his captors. The gameplay here is pretty classic parser stuff: explore a closed environs, find stuff, use it in weird ways to ultimately escape. The use of a Bigfoot protag is a pretty elegant and amusing way to bypass NPC interactions, as well as narratively justifying the escape problem in the first place. Otherwise, the gameplay trades pretty specifically on nameless, faceless protagonist standards, including the manipulation of keypads and telephones. This is not a TERRIBLE choice, the text is pretty cheeky about finding opportunities to remind us of our identity where the gameplay does not. I just kept wishing for maybe a little more protag-specificity. Especially with THIS protag. I mean, if we gonna be 'Squatching, let us 'SQUATCH!

I found the implementation pretty smooth and friction-free. There were occasional synonym issues but not enough to drag the proceedings. The soft cuing was really well done. Rarely was I at a loss for things to try or worst case revisit. In the moment of gameplay, I WAS confounded by what seemed like a large amount of Red Herring items - items that clearly were interesting but resisted attempts to use or interact with. The fact that I was able to make progress, and ultimately escape, without them felt like unnecessary time sinks that acted as a drag on the proceedings, kind of unwelcome in a work this short. Except my relatively modest score and ending text indicated that there were multiple ways to escape and multiple endings. Presenting a strong likelihood that these seeming diversions actually played to different narrative threads and endings. That’s kinda cool!

But. Because my FIRST ending was ‘Success’ and because I didn’t QUITE get a full-on Bigfoot Experience I didn’t really feel compelled to go back and try for more. I had a good time with my run. The puzzle and challenges were nicely tuned to the short duration of the game, and fun enough to grapple with that it rewarded my time and effort. It was polished enough and funny enough to leave me with a warm feeling. Why monkey with that? (No cultural offense intended.)

Okay, one more lore dive. Other names for Sasquatch: Florida - Skunk Ape (Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse makes sense now!); Virginia - WOOD BOOGER; Alabama - White Thang. Because of course.