HHH.exe

HHH.exe

Robot Parking

Web

Summary: Nostalgia, for some

[spoiler]If I hadn’t read other reviews of HHH.exe, I would have been totally nonplussed by it. For me, the experience was not really good or bad, but more or less empty. I roamed around, following links more or less at random, until I was able to access additional areas. There were some graphics that got increasingly corrupted as the game proceeded. I ended up in some sort of maze, with a story about someone called Penelope, someone called Hugo, and a minotaur. It was an odd mishmash of B-movie tropes, a sort of pixellated Rocky Horror Picture Show, only less coherent.

Other reviews suggest that if I knew about a game called Hugo’s House of Horrors, I might have had a madeleine moment. As it is, I don’t and I didn’t. I’m left feeling that I’m just not the target audience, since this is certainly not badly done (from a craft point of view). I thought the writing was shaded purple, but it was meant to be. I thought the general design — the coordination of graphics and text — was well planned, and the length was about right. I liked the way the locations and responses changed as the game continued. But I just ended up feeling like I was listening to a joke that depended on a cultural context I don’t have. I can see that those for whom this makes sense will probably enjoy it more than I did.[/spoiler]