I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (MS-DOS)

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, now there's a proper sci-fi story title right there. It's the kind of name that lodges in your brain and demands curiosity. Plus someone requested that I play the game, so I might as well give it a look.

IHNMAIMS is a graphic adventure challenging the player with "profound ethical dilemmas dealing with emotionally charged issues including the horrors of insanity, selfishness, rape, racism, paranoia, genocide, and the dark rivers of human emotion that surge beneath the civilized surface of us all." The intention was to create a game that players could not possibly win, to preserve the story's nightmarish mood. So it's going to be a lot like a ZX Spectrum game then I guess.

The game is inspired by the short story of the same title, written by legendary sci-fi author Harlan Ellison 29 years earlier. But his name isn't just up there to sell copies. Nope, his name's up there because Harlan Ellison has the ego of ten men; he even put his own face in the box art! Actually he took an active role in the game's development, writing up the initial treatment of the game with writer David Sears, and polishing the dialogue after the game was in a playable state, so there's a fair chance that it'll be well written at least.
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