Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die 2

This is an expanded version of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die. There's more to do, but I couldn't figure out what to do to solve it... Or whether it was possible to solve it. Is that the joke? I dunno.

With this demo, the basic premise of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die is recast in a slightly more expansive world. But is that a step forward? On the contrary, in this case, I would argue that it's a step backward.

While the larger scope of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die 2 opens the floor to a mix of interesting jokes, puns, and puzzles, it sacrifices the beautifully minimalistic design that made the franchise distinctive in the first place. And while the original was disciplined enough to hew tightly to its severely limited world-model, this sequel plays fast and loose, introducing a number of incomplete locations and puzzles. Granted, this is a demo we're dealing with, but even so: isn't it good practice to limit a demo to a more-or-less complete segment of a game, rather than allowing players to see all the bare scaffolding of things yet-to-be-written?

On top of that, one of the key weaknesses of the original - a lack of comprehensive implementation - persists in the sequel, now with even more things mentioned but not implemented as objects.

While Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die 2 is amusing at times, it lacks the singular vision that made the original so memorable.

How do you make that trombone sound they play in sitcoms for disappointment? That (wow wow wow woooooow) sound? I heard that playing in my head for this game.

This game would have been fine in and of itself. The problem is that it's a sequel to a one shot joke game. As such, I had certain expectations. Yeah, you pick it up, or push it, or pull it. But soon I found that I had an inventory, and there were other rooms to explore, and suddenly the whole game got very big. Much bigger than a joke game ever needs to be.

What would Zork: A troll's eye view, be if you could leave the troll room?
What 9:05 be if you could (Spoiler - click to show) not kill that guy ?

The only thing I could conclude is that this is NOT a joke game, but a light humor puzzle game, and that's fine, but it's very misleading as a sequel to Pick up the Phone Booth and Die.

I'm sure the game ends up being okay, but I just couldn't concentrate. It's like taking a one line joke, and making it into a long drawn out story to get to the same punch-line. Some jokes need to be one-liners.