#DiscoverIndies: Earthworms (NS)

I decided to play Earthworms as part of the inaugural #DiscoverIndies created by IndieGamerChick over on Twitter and her self titled review site IndieGamerChick.com.

After completing Thimbleweed Park and reigniting my interest and desire to play point-and-click adventure games (thanks to Shadowgate for starting that fire), I was on the lookout for a game that would scratch that proverbial itch.  What drew me to Earthworms was the art style, and the promise of a mystery in a surreal world with horror elements slightly reminiscent of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, but maybe not quite as dark?  I felt that Earthworms fit fairly well the criteria for #DiscoverIndies as (at the time of this writing) there is only one review on Metacritic from back in September of 2018, and in Nintendo's eShop, the game was at least four scroll pages deep (despite it being on sale from $7.99 to $0.99; although that sale ended Thursday January 3rd).

As stated above, Earthworms is a point-and-click mystery adventure game where you play as parapsychic Detective Daniel White who is visited by a mysterious stranger who hires him to look into the disappearance of a young girl.  This part of the story is pretty standard film noir stuff, except in Earthworms, the femme fatale delivering Mr. White into the story is not an attractive young woman on the verge of tears, but instead is a stoic man in a guile suit.  That first tip off that this game is going to be out of the ordinary and is not so much a subtle nod as it is a slap across the face with a three day old unpickled mackerel.

So far, Earthworms has done a pretty decent job with blending the quirkiness, such as the unnamed man in the guile suit, coupled with the unsettling-ness of a corpse full of protruding tentacles found in the basement of a building.  There is just enough character interaction, item descriptions, semi-fourth-wall-breaking that I feel like this story and world could have been written by David Lynch for a spin off series of Twin Peaks.  Thank god Bob has yet to show up, although I would not be surprised if either chevrons or owls showed up at a later date.  The music, by composer Piotr Surmacz, is perfectly suited to the strangeness of the world, creating an amusing mix of tension and whimsicality. 

The main thing that sets Earthworms apart from some of the other point-and-click games I have played is the parapsychic aspect in the story and the UI that was optimized for the Switch port by SONKA.  Whenever Detective White comes across that is story-centric, he has a semi-cryptic vision of something that is related to a plot and quest point.  In the scene to the left, upon arriving at the ice cream shack, White has the image of a glass filled with a pair of eyeballs (and maybe a tongue?) next to a bottle 2/3rds filled with. . .something.  To both himself and the player, this image will tie this location to anywhere or whomever else the image pops up next to.  Not only is this a very useful device for honing the player in on where to focus attention, but it also works in-universe, so there is no need to bolden or highlight text for important facts or details when talking to NPCs.  The UI aspect, is that the cursor is immediately drawn to areas/items of interest and snaps to them.  This helps with a controller controlled cursor to assist the player when they might have passed over something of interest but too small or indistinguishable from the rest of the background.

At the moment in the game, I am stuck.  I am attempting to locate an object hidden somewhere in one of the five accessible screens, two talkable NPCs and an inventory full of objects that I cannot give to anyone.  This is my general problem with point-and-click adventure games, that I inevitably hit a wall where I do not know where to go or what else to do.  This is not a criticism of Earthworms, but only my ability to do things without some form of outside help.  And I am loathe to look at the one walkthrough that I have found, but I may end up taking that route if I am unable to figure out what to do.  And I know that my problem with point-and-click adventure games in general is that I tend to over-complicate things.  Turning something as simple as picking up a phone and calling a pre-programmed number, into searching for finding some way to distract the mayor with items from my inventory so that he will become upset/grossed out/happy, and walk away from what he is doing so that I can ransack the chest next to him which will give me the number needed for the wall safe which will give me either another piece of the puzzle or lead to another clue that I can use on the old woman (not in Scene 24).

So that is where I am at.  Flummoxed in a game that I did not previously know about, interacting in a world that I am greatly intrigued by, and wondering how all of the asana-ing in specific locations is connected.  Or maybe I am still just overthinking things.  Again.  I really like what I have played so far in Earthworms, and if the screenshots on the company's page are any indication, I still have quite a ways to go before finishing the game, which is perfectly fine with me.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Don't Wanna Think Anymore

Yeah, I probably wouldn't want to touch a bunch of tentacles climbing out of some dark woods either.  Sorry White.