Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Hippo on Elm Street’ and ‘Down to Earth’
Page 57 starts with WORDS and FLAVOURS
Hippo on Elm Street is a text adventure created by Adri, an indie dev and software engineer. Inspired by the greatest Canadian PSA commercial of all time — here it is for all of you that have no idea what I’m talking about — players will be following the house hippo as it is awoken from its slumber.
As one might expect from text-based adventures, players will be reading prompts that give descriptions of their starting location, and typing words in to the console in order to explore the world. The hippo is very small, so everything described may not be as obvious as it appears as players attempt to figure out what exactly is going on.
As always, the biggest hurdle to cross is understanding the language necessary to perform actions — thankfully Adri includes an entire glossary index in a separate pdf to assist with prompts and understanding.
Text-based narratives are not for everyone, so I cannot say whether or not you will enjoy Hippo on Elm Street. However, for those of us that grew up watching that PSA on TV this is a fantastic piece of interactive fiction to completely immerse yourself in, especially thanks to the colourful language and adorable scenarios.
If you enjoy stories that alter your perception of a house, or just really love the house hippo, this might be a great game to try out.
Down to Earth is a first person adventure created by LUXI, a multimedia artist and musician in the United States, and was created during the Epic MegaJam of 2019. Having crashed down on this foreign planet, a witch must fight her way out to hopefully make it back home to Earth.
Each level contains a plethora of colours and shapes for the player to explore with their magic wand, all in the hopes of finding portals that lead to the next level. This is all in the pursuit of a wormhole that will hopefully take the witch away from this cursed place so that she can get home.
From here it is relatively straight forward, with movement and jumping all being used to navigate. The wand is for firing heart-shaped love projectiles as the unfriendly cats who call this planet home and will pursue the witch whenever seen. I’m not entirely sure what happens when their health reaches 0, but they explode so I guess love does kill.
What makes Down to Earth so interesting is the aesthetics put on display. The entire thing is rainbows and neon lights galore, with the shine and polish mixed with 2D sprites. The music is fantastic as it sets the atmosphere perfectly, and the sound design is hilariously adorable. I shouldn’t be surprised that a multimedia artist would make such aesthetically cohesive works, but nonetheless the timeframe helps to make it that much more impressive.
If you are a fan of game jam games and just want something fun and adorable to play, give this a try.
