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Have You Played... Beckett?

Grubby cool

Beckett is weeeeeeird. It's a story-driven sort of adventure, except what it really is, is a scuttling little cockroach, and the cockroach smokes 40 Lambert & Butler a day and hasn't washed in a week. And has depression, probably.

The pitch: you're a washed up detective, and take on a job to find a woman's missing son. Everything is top-down, and in shades of brown and grey - your mood board is old concrete, wet cardboard, and a newspaper that's been pissed on.

Your investigation involves going to places and talking to people, but everyone is represented by a marker rather than being a person. Sort of like a board game but the pieces are whatever you can find around the house or cut from magazines. A sexy lady in a bar is a cupid's bow mouth with a pair of legs. The mother is a brooch. Shopkeepers are pennies. When you have conversations with these people, you don't hear dialogue, you hear a sound uncomfortably close in your ear. Kissy noises, or lip-smacking. The bartender sounds like a cocktail-shaker. I found it all pretty horrible. But in a good way.

Sometimes the writing goes a bit "I'm a third year in your creative writing class, I own a typewriter, and I want to write the great American novel but, like, the great English novel, y'know?" BUT it has also won a Scottish BAFTA, which means it's probably worth a gander, innit?

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Alice Bell avatar
Alice Bell: Small person powered by tea and books; RPS's dep ed 2018-2024. Send her etymological facts and cool horror or puzzle games.
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