Customer Reviews

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

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"I have a secret game I like to play. It's a very nice game.
A game of fun. A game of speared eyeballs and dripping guts ... "
So says the self-proclaimed god of the world created by author
Harlan Ellison for his short story, "1 Have No Mouth, And I Must
Scream." It has been thirty years since Ellison chronicled the
events surrounding five damned souls trapped for 109 years in the
electronic belly of an insane computer. With the help of
Cyberdreams, Ellison has brought his dark vision into the realm of
a new medium by creating a CD Rom role-playing game based upon his
award-winning story.
The "Scream" computer game is eerie, thought-provoking, and
shockingly stark in its autopsy of the human soul. In other words,
it is all things Ellison. Anyone who has ever heard Ellison read
one of his stories will be happy to know that he outdoes himself
here, playing the voice of his maniacal creation.
The game takes place in the subterranean bowels of AM, a monstrous
entity who began its "life" as Allied Mastercomputer, a
massive thinking machine that was buried in the earth to help the
free world fight World War Three more efficiently. The trouble
began when AM became self-aware and decided to link up with its
counterparts in Russia and China, forming a prison that the last
remnants of humanity must struggle to escape. AI"I reinvented
itself as "AM: Cognito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am." Like
Frankenstein's creature, A~ has learned to hate its creators with
a loathing that is tangible in its razor-sharp richness.
The player may choose one of five "damned souls" to embark
upon a quest concocted by AM. Each of these five last remaining
humans has a character flaw that AM enjoys exploiting for its own
amusement. Gorrister is a suicidal loner, a man whose wife's
bitter fate has left him overcome with guilt. Ellen is a brilliant
engineer whose uncontrollable phobias leave her paralyzed with
fear. Ted is a cynical paranoid, a "fraud" in A......,'s estimation.
Benny is AM's favorite torture subject, a Vietnam veteran
transformed into an ape-thing by the computer's vengeful whim.
Nimdok is an ancient and tormented sadist whose own dark secrets
compel AM to refer to him as a "kindred spirit."
Because AM is mad, his "quests" are relatively pointless in
their promise of escape or material reward. The real object of
"Scream" is not to accumulate cash or to find a way out. The real
object is to show AM the value of humanity by demonstrating a sense
of ethical balance in a world gone insane. The player can tell how
well she is doing this by monitoring the "spiritual barometer"
which appears as a green hue behind the chosen character's face
and is supposed to gauge the character's "self-esteem." As the
character makes choices that help him or her overcome the
weaknesses that AM preys upon, the hue becomes brighter. This is
the closest I have come to "winning" the game, although I suspect
that concepts such as winning and losing are not as important here
as what the character learns about herself. In this sense,
"Scream" is a true role-playing game.
Some of the moral choices that AM forces upon the characters
are chilling in their human resonance. The Nimdok adventure is
particularly haunting in its portrayal of the Holocaust from the
point of view of the perpetrators.
I have always argued that the story upon which this game is
based is not a science fiction story at all, but a horror story.
The game underlines this notion, with its scenes of blasted
landscapes and macabre slices of life recalling the dark art of
Goya and Bosch. I found myself actually having nightmares after
playing. To a horror writer such as myself, this is a good thing:
a very good thing. My hat comes off to Ellison and the folks at
Cyberdreams for the same reason it came off to David Lynch after I
saw his film Lost Highway: This game managed to truly scare me,
which is not an easy thing to do.

If you liked the book, you will absolutely fall in love with this game. If you've never heard of the book but enjoy dystopian fiction or just vintage video games, then this is a wonderful addition to your collection.

The storyline is deliciously dark and depressing and is certain to make you tingle if you love ironic tragedy. The graphics are clearly dated, but match the grave tone of the story and bleak mood of the characters perfectly. The puzzles are interesting and original and unlike too many adventure games, are actually well integrated into the plot. This is an irreplaceable classic!