Spencer, James – Lamp Quest

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Lamp Quest

So, who out there played point and click text adventure games back in the day? That might not even be the correct term, but they were computer games mostly in the late 80’s and 90’s where you had to type in commands to solve a mystery or complete a task of some sort. My touchstone is Day of the Tentacle (with a few Spacequest games thrown in), so just look that one up if you’re still baffled. Anyway, this is an entirely too accurate recreation of the feeling of playing one of those games, and I mean that in the nicest possible sense. This one starts off with the main character sitting in a chair at home, with no obvious clues of what to do or where to go next. He enters “take lamp,” is informed by the omniscient and maddening narrator of all such games that he already owns the lamp, and then switches his command to “pick up lamp.” But the lamp is still connected to the cord, so he can only walk so far from his starting position. To continue the game he decides to drop the lamp, which has disastrous consequences. Does this story seem ridiculous? Welcome to the world of those games! Just imagine trying to figure out what was happening in those things with no internet around to help you. The character continues on to the haunting page I sampled below, and then he has to get to work on figuring out that mysterious door. Honestly, my only quibble with this comic is that it ends a bit abruptly. Unless it’s meant to convey the real life moment when you’d just stop playing a game like this out of sheer frustration, in which case it was perfectly done. If you’re familiar with this type of game you’re going to love this, although I can’t be held responsible for any feelings of gaming PTSD you get while reading it. If this type of game is an alien concept, give the comic a shot! You can see what life used to be like in the gaming world. Or just play the remastered Day of the Tentacle that’s currently on Playstation (and I think Steam). Try that sucker out and see how far you get without cheating. $5