A game based on the short story by Harlan Ellison sees a group of five people trapped inside some sort of digital hellscape. They have been there for over 100 years and want to escape; however, the all-powerful and overseeing AI called AM is trying to stop them. The short tales of these five individuals, with almost no backstory, thrust us directly into their lives. We don't understand their motivations for being here, and we barely get to know who or what AM is. I Have No Mouth is another adventure title from Cyberdreams that focuses more on the atmosphere, art, and voice acting than on gameplay.
I Have No Mouth is jam-packed with puzzles, items for your inventory, and a variety of ways to utilize them. I recommend following a guide to a T to get an idea of how the game plays out first, but even with the guide, I was confused and lost. Each scenario has multiple endings, and getting the totem at the end of each scenario requires a perfect playthrough. These roadblocks will either just end the scenario, resulting in that character not being able to act in the final scene, or end the entire game. This will necessitate constant trial and error and backtracking, which can be incredibly frustrating. Who would want to do this? This open-endedness is the wrong way to get different endings.
Even within each scenario, combining objects and using them in the correct order is mostly impossible without a guide. Unless you spend dozens of hours trying things in different ways, you will never get far. Some puzzles are extremely obtuse, and even with a guide, I constantly reminded myself that I would never have guessed to solve them. Using certain objects in a particular manner simply doesn't make sense. You can't use a cloth as a blindfold to bypass a specific character. How would I have known that? Adventure games from the early to mid-1990s faced numerous issues, which are evident in I Have No Mouth.
If you do use a guide, the scenarios are quite interesting and play a part in the morality and perspective of both good and bad people. The artwork and music are amazing, with a lot of detail put into the atmosphere. Each scenario looks and feels different, but I wanted to know more about AM and why these characters are here. There's not much of an explanation for any of this. Each scenario is also very short. You can complete the entire game with a guide in less than 2 hours. I also feel that for the amount of trial and error the game has, there are too many actions you can use. Swallow, give, take, push, use, talk to, walk to—it's just way too much. It becomes tedious to use nearly every command on each object. It's simply not fun at all.
Overall, I Have No Mouth is an interesting spin on moral choices, but there's no overarching story here to keep you wanting more. The characters also have no backstory, and I wanted to know more about AM and what this hellscape is all about. The game has way too many actions, trial-and-error roadblock endings, and just a bad case of 90's adventure qualms. I Have No Mouth is largely overrated as a game, and there are other adventure titles that offer more striking visuals. If you need to use a guide just to finish the game, then you know there's a problem. Good voice acting and music aside, there's just too much that will make a player quit early on.
I Have No Mouth is jam-packed with puzzles, items for your inventory, and a variety of ways to utilize them. I recommend following a guide to a T to get an idea of how the game plays out first, but even with the guide, I was confused and lost. Each scenario has multiple endings, and getting the totem at the end of each scenario requires a perfect playthrough. These roadblocks will either just end the scenario, resulting in that character not being able to act in the final scene, or end the entire game. This will necessitate constant trial and error and backtracking, which can be incredibly frustrating. Who would want to do this? This open-endedness is the wrong way to get different endings.
Even within each scenario, combining objects and using them in the correct order is mostly impossible without a guide. Unless you spend dozens of hours trying things in different ways, you will never get far. Some puzzles are extremely obtuse, and even with a guide, I constantly reminded myself that I would never have guessed to solve them. Using certain objects in a particular manner simply doesn't make sense. You can't use a cloth as a blindfold to bypass a specific character. How would I have known that? Adventure games from the early to mid-1990s faced numerous issues, which are evident in I Have No Mouth.
If you do use a guide, the scenarios are quite interesting and play a part in the morality and perspective of both good and bad people. The artwork and music are amazing, with a lot of detail put into the atmosphere. Each scenario looks and feels different, but I wanted to know more about AM and why these characters are here. There's not much of an explanation for any of this. Each scenario is also very short. You can complete the entire game with a guide in less than 2 hours. I also feel that for the amount of trial and error the game has, there are too many actions you can use. Swallow, give, take, push, use, talk to, walk to—it's just way too much. It becomes tedious to use nearly every command on each object. It's simply not fun at all.
Overall, I Have No Mouth is an interesting spin on moral choices, but there's no overarching story here to keep you wanting more. The characters also have no backstory, and I wanted to know more about AM and what this hellscape is all about. The game has way too many actions, trial-and-error roadblock endings, and just a bad case of 90's adventure qualms. I Have No Mouth is largely overrated as a game, and there are other adventure titles that offer more striking visuals. If you need to use a guide just to finish the game, then you know there's a problem. Good voice acting and music aside, there's just too much that will make a player quit early on.