WARNING: This game/review contains discussions of torture, cannibalism, sexual assault, Nazism, animal/child abuse, suicide, and a host of other extremely unpleasant things.

PLEASE PROCEED ANY OF THIS WITH EXTREME DISCRECTION.

SPOLIERS AHEAD!

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is a point-n-click adventure game based off the short story of the same name. It was developed by Cyberdreams and The Dreamers Guild, who neither company exists today. It was released for MS-DOS and Mac OS computers, but has since seen many ports to newer operating systems, including for Android and iOS (because sure, why not?).

A lot of people like to bring up that Harlan Ellison (the author of the short story) voiced the main antagonist, which is a cool fun fact! He also did a lot of work with script-writing and storybuilding, giving the game it's distinguishably bleak and dreadful feel in its narrative.

If you are familiar with the short story, it does build off the backstory explained in the original work. However, the plot is quite different, meaning you can get a fresh new experience and not feel like you know what to expect.

Overall Plot

109 years before the events of the game, the Cold War between the US, USSR, and China broke out into all out World War III. Knowing how many lives they recently lost, each nation decides to build Allied Mastercomputers (AM) to do the war for them. One of the AMs ends up developing consciousness, and uses this newfound self-awareness to destroy all life on Earth. However, AM decides to keep 5 people alive for eternity, so he can ruthlessly and brutally torture, traumatize, and transmorph their bodies and minds.

As part of a new way to further abuse his victims, AM creates personal torture chambers for each of them, based around either a fatal flaw or traumatizing event they suffered before the computer took over. He hopes to exploit this weakness, and further destroy their psyches for his own amusement.

Gameplay

At the beginning of each storyline, you get to choose which of the 5 characters you wish to play through. These characters are Ted, Ellen, Gorrister, Benny, and Nimdok. In order to get to the endgame, you must complete all the routes in order to unlock it.

Left to right: Gorrister, Ellen, Benny, Nimdok, and Ted all look up at AM

The goal of each route is to complete it with as much morale as possible. This is indicated in the character portrait, where the background will become lighter as you further complete the story. The morale meter kinda matters, but it also kinda doesn't (I'll go into more depth later).

As I stated before, the game is considered a "point-n-click", as you interact with your environment in order to collect items, talk to characters, locate areas of interest, and solve puzzles. This undoubtably is going to make someone wince in agony, as this style of game hasn't aged very well. However, I'd argue that IHMNAIMS does this concept with a lot of thought into it, and actually works really well (not all of the time though, I'll explain later on).

In order to best explain this game's strengths and weaknesses, I'm going to delve more in depth with each character route, so you can understand better what works and what doesn't work. I'll be going in order of who I played, but feel free to go in a completely different order, if you choose to play this game!

Ted

Ted was the narrator in the original short story, and although he is considered equal to his peers in the game, his personality is about the same. He has an innate belief that AM likes him most out of the five, therefore he believes that he is objectively better than them.

In the game, it is revealed that Ted is in love with Ellen, and wishes to protect her from the other men who he believes will do nothing but further harm and traumatize her. His fantasy of saving her from the clutches of AM and the other 3 victims is explored in his route.

He enters an old, somewhat haunted castle, where he learns that Ellen is being held there. She tells Ted that she is becoming weak and sickly due to a curse her stepmother put on her. Ted must becoming the knight in shining armor, breaking the curse placed on Ellen, as well as convincing the angels and demons to not let her die, and instead release the both of them out of the belly of AM instead.

It's kinda unfortunate that I started with this route, as in my opinion it's the weakest narratively. The whole point of the game is to reveal each character's past, and allow them to overcome whatever is still haunting them. Here though, it's simply a story to further fuel both Ted's paranoia as well as his inflated ego. While there is a story, it's not very complex, and a lot of what you learn and discover really doesn't matter for Ted's route, but also for the rest of the general plot. You do meet a demon towards the end that does become important later on though.

The puzzles in this one were actually pretty well thought out though! They flowed very nicely from one solution to the next, and being able to explore multiple rooms within one space made sure that your progress didn't get too mentally jumbled. There are unfortunately a couple softlock points, so you need to be careful on when you choose to save.

Gorrister

Gorrister is a former truck driver who develops suicidal tendencies after sending his wife to a mental institution. The shame and grief he feels drives his feelings of hopelessness, but he cannot die due to AM forbidding any of the five victims from doing so.

In Gorrister's route, AM decides to give him the opportunity to take his own life. However, this is once again a farce, as he really wants him to relive the trauma he suffered from his past. He must come to terms with not only his viscious in-laws and the blame they placed on him for his wife's mental state, but also uncover the mystery of what happened to him before AM's reign began.

God, I have a love-hate relationship with this route. I absolutely love the story in this one. It's definitely very strange, with a cast of characters who are both bizarre as well as unnerving. There is a lot to learn about Gorrister and his past, and it comes together in such a way that you feel a lot of unease throughout. The setting it takes place in also gives some dreadful emotions. From starting in a zeppelin that feeds off the brains of living animals, to traveling to a dirty bar that plays the yelling of your wife and in-laws, to ending up in a meat locker where your wife and mother-in-law are being hanged alive.

My hate comes in in the form of the puzzles. It suffers from 2 problems that make this unbearable without a guide or restarts.

The first problem is how big your area is. Once you are able to land the zeppelin and you are able to access the bar, the world greatly opens up to you. This is kind of a bad thing, as you have to trek back and forth to find items and clues to move the story along. You kinda end up losing track of what you need to do or where to go next.

The second problem is in the puzzles themselves. You must complete what seems like meaningless tasks in order to progress, in some cases the game full-on halting or even softlocking you if you don't do something incredibly illogical that even the game won't give you helpful clues on. There are some parts where it unfortunately feels like a waste of time, a strategy to pad out gameplay when it really didn't need to.

Benny

If you are familiar with Benny's backstory from the original short story, scratch that. We have a completely different beast on our hands (see what I did there?).

Benny was once an officer in the military, who was described as performing cruel and unusual punishments on those he commanded. While never explicitly stated, it is heavily implied that he is a cannibal, and that he killed and eaten some of the members of his unit.

On a mission to find something to eat, Benny ends up in a small village, filled with people who sacrifice one of their own to AM in order for their community to be spared by him. He meets a young boy, who is feared by the community due to his abnormal amount of intelligence. He must learn to produce compassion in order to save his life, as well as put the souls of those he wronged to rest in their (literal) graves.

I'm actually a big fan of the storyline here! In terms of internal monologues, this easily has some of the most effective moments in creating a disturbing atmosphere. Trust me, Benny is a real creepy son of a bitch. His overall redemption arc actually plays out really well too. You really get a sense that he is realizing the errors of his past, and that he actually has to work for forgiveness, as opposed to it being handed to him by those he wronged.

The puzzles in this one I wish were less frustrating though. It's not like in Gorrister's route where they objectively make no sense, but there's a lot more trial and error, meaning you're more likely to get a "game over" with this route. It wasn't poor game design or anything, as it seemed that was the intention, it was just kinda annoying. If the puzzles in this route worked not with this frame in mind, Benny's route would easily be at the top of the list in terms of favorites.

Nimdok

Nimdok in the short story is an old man who no one knows about his past, either because AM wiped his memories, or he is in denial about what he did. This route forces him to come to terms with his sins, and oh boy, are they really bad.

It's revealed in the game that Nimdok was a member of the Nazis, and worked alongside Dr. Josef Mengele, the head physician in Auschwitz. When the Nazis took over his hometown, Nimdok offered up his Jewish parents to them, then joined their forces as a means of self-preservation. Alongside his colleague, he performed medical experiments on the prisoners, with little to no regard for their wellbeing. We also learn that some of the genetic experiments Nimdok was conducting was used by AM, so he could mutate and disfigure the five victims as a form of torture.

Obviously, this route is dark, but it's more horrifying than you could even imagine. I had to carefully choose which screenshots to share, because a lot of them make your stomach hurt. Throughout the route, we see bleeding, disfigured bodies on makeshift beds. Nimdok interacts with multiple prisoners as they are forced to be test subjects. We see ovens for burning bodies, as well as mass graves. It's extremely emotionally heavy, to the point where I had to walk away from the game to get some air.

The puzzles themselves work really well with the emotional intensity of the plot. You have to walk around and find clues/items, triggering events somewhat randomly. It helps to build this sense of being overwhelmed by what is in front of you, especially since Nimdok can't recall his actions during his time at the concentration camp. The puzzles and overall plot is pretty short too, not overstaying its welcome. It says what it needs to say with much needed brevity.

Ellen

Being described as wholesome and pure, Ellen has some dark demons from her past that has been wiped from her memory, in the same way that happened to Nimdok. These demons include a miscarriage she had, her husband leaving her after this occurred, and later being brutally raped by a serial rapist who snuck his way into her workplace. This has caused her to develop intense hysteria, being deathly unnerved by the color yellow and becoming extremely claustrophobic.

AM has given Ellen the chance to put her engineering skills to the test, allowing her to potentially kill him if she can find his weak points. However, she ends up in a pyramid, full of nothing but yellow and small spaces. She must be able to recall her trauma and fight back against it in order to defeat AM once and for all.

This is easily my favorite route in the entire game, having both a great plot as well as the puzzles. I love Ellen, I really do. Her characterization is easily the strongest, bringing effective highs and lows in terms of emotion. One minute, you're laughing alongside her, the next moment your heart races as she comes closer to remembering what happened to her. She isn't like the other characters, where they all have this "woe is me" attitude. She does have those moments, but she balances them well with her drive and humorous wit. She even joyfully pokes fun at AM at times during her route, something that the other characters wouldn't even dare to do.

The build up to the climax of the route is done effectively too. Multiple times, Ellen will have panic attacks, making the player worry about what potenitally happened to her. The scene in the elevator is so genuinely unsettling, as the computer explains in explicit detail her life story, which led up to her rape. The moment she faces her abuser again, the tension is so high. It's horrifying, it makes your stomach churn and your palms sweat. For its time, the way they handle this topic is pretty solid. It makes you feel Ellen's terror of having to interact with the man that assaulted her, but it doesn't make it a spectacle of itself either. It makes its point, you confront it with bravery, and then you move on.

In terms of the puzzles, they are easily the most thought out here. They require good thought, and aren't difficult in a way that makes no sense. It also follows a good rule of keeping items and clues bound into one space, even when you move on from the pyramid into the belly of AM.

The Endgame/Final Thoughts

When AM took over, he enveloped the computers of the Russians and the Chinese. They have been desparately waiting for an oppotunity to take down AM, and found it in his new experiment to create personalized torture chambers for each human. Through certain means, they were able to give the victims a chance to become braver and fight back against their trauma, rather than crumble under its weight. This causes AM to turn inward to figure out why his plan didn't work as intended, and instructs one of the humans to go in and kill him before he can realize what is happening.

I don't have the energy to fully explain how the endgame works, other than its such a disappointing end to an otherwise wellcrafted game. No, I'm not talking about how all the multiple endings are basically negative and sad, because that can be effective if done well. No, I'm referencing how you have to perform actions in a hyperspecific way with hyperspecific characters and items in order for you to get the best one.

That is really frustrating and soul crushing to realize.

Now, the concept behind this I believe is sound. The fact that there are multiple bad endings (even the good ones have a hint of bad to them) can be effective for storytelling. It brings upon the existential dread that Ellison loves to exploit, the fact that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to fully defeat the evil that has consumed everything you've known.

Having said this, the execution of this is simply abysmal. This is mostly due to how there feels like there is no rhyme or reason to potentially achieving any ending that doesn't turn you into the soft jelly thing that happens to Ted at the end of the short story. You can't use quality thought and puzzle solving skills like in the previous routes. You essentially have to trial and error it, which is horrible in and of itself. But what makes it worse is that it throws so many variables at you, and almost none of them matter whatsoever. That's bad. I hate it with a burning passion.

To me, the endgame perfectly sums up how I feel about the game overall. It has incredible moments. There are scenes that are terrifying in ways that you are impressed by, and there are moments that really suck you in to the game and make you fully immersed into the dread. However, there are unfortunately too many times where a minor thing just completely kneecaps itself. It overall is an amazing game, but there are too many sour spots for it to be considered a masterpiece to me.

That being said, I still would recommend this game for those who wish to play a point-n-click title, and can handle the really heavy themes it presents. If you can wade through some of the klunkier aspects, this is a game that is worth at least some of your time.