Imagine a world dominated by AI, where a creature of artificial intelligence keeps you enslaved and tortures you as it plays with your mind. Sounds scary right? Well, it’s worse than you think it is as the horror is unimaginable.
I read the book and played the game and let me just tell you that it sent some chills down my spine. But let’s break everything down, shall we?
Game Overview
The I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream game is a point-and-click adventure horror game, released on October 31, 1995. The game was developed by Cyberdreams and The Dreamers Guild, and published by Nightdive Studios.
The game is based on Harlan Ellison’s short story of the same title. A very interesting piece of information about Mr. Ellison is that he not only wrote the book but also gave his voice to AM, the AI creature, and participated in the game’s design.
Gameplay
The game takes place in a dystopian world where AM, the AI creature, has wiped out humanity except for five people. The player gets to play with each one of the survivors and has to go through some actions and decisions such as constructing sentences and telling the characters what to do.
Each of the five characters has a spiritual barometer and is free to do good or evil acts. The way that the player will decide how the character will act, will eventually influence the character’s spiritual barometer. Good acts are rewarded by boosting the barometer while on the other hand, evil acts are punished by lowering the character’s spiritual barometer.
The spiritual barometer plays an important role for each character as this is what will affect the chances of the player destroying AM, the AI creature, in the final adventure scene of the game.
Characters
There are five main characters in the game. All of them have been slightly altered from the original story of the book, so they can adapt better to the game.
- Ellen: Ellen has a dark past and suffers from phobias. She was raped inside an elevator and her rapist was wearing yellow. As a result, she is suffering from claustrophobia and also has a phobia of the color yellow. AM knows about that so it puts her inside an Egyptian temple that contains some of AM’s units and gives her a chance to destroy it. She has to face her rapist and overcome her fears to fight back AM.
- Gorrister: Gorrister had to put his wife in a mental institution and he feels guilty about that, to the point where he is suicidal. Gorrister has a hole in his chest where his heart used to be and AM offers him the chance to finally kill himself but also sabotages that. In his scenario, Gorrister learns to bury the past as he finds out that his mother-in-law Edna also felt responsible for driving his wife insane and she accused him of it without that being his fault.
- Ted: Ted used to use his charm and looks to seduce rich single women out of money. Of course, AM made him paranoid and offered him his freedom if he could solve a puzzle in a dark room, which worsened his paranoia. He then finds himself in a castle where his love Ellen is slowly dying due to a spell. The castle is full of deceptive characters and Ted can’t decide if he can trust them or not but eventually he finds a way to free both himself and Ellen.
- Benny: Benny is an ape-like military officer who ends up killing members of his unit for failing to meet his expectations. AM severely damaged Benny’s brain but restored it for Benny’s scenario. This takes place in a stone-aged community where the villagers draw a lottery to decide which of them will be sacrificed to AM. Benny ends up sacrificing himself to save a child from the lottery, something that would never do in the past since he lacks compassion.
- Nimdok – Nimdok is an elderly ex-German physician, who finds himself in a concentration camp. AM has given him the task of finding “the lost tribe” and expects him to conduct brutal medical experiments on helpless subjects, something that he used to do before. Once he finds the truth about himself and what he did to his Jewish parents, he frees himself by helping the Jewish captives of the camp escape and letting them kill him for his past crimes.
AM’s Monologue
AM clearly hates people and that’s why he whipped out humanity and he gives us the reasons in his hate monologue.
”HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”
I don’t know about you but for me, this chilling monologue kind of scared me, to be honest.
FUN FACT: In case you are wondering who gave a voice to AM, you will be surprised to know that this was Harlan Ellison himself!
Endings
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream has seven different endings. The way the game will end depends on how the finale is completed.
The player’s actions and the order in which he will decide to play with each character will determine the way the game will end.
System Requirements
| MINIMUM | RECOMMENDED |
|---|---|
| OS: Windows 7 / 8.1 / 10 | OS: Windows 10 |
| Processor: IBM PC with a 233Mhz 486 processor | Processor: IBM PC with a 486 DX2/ 66Mhz (or faster) processor |
| Memory: 64 MB RAM | Memory: 128 MB RAM |
| DirectX: Version 9.0c | DirectX: Version 9.0c |
| Graphics: A VESA compatible Super VGA card | Graphics: A VESA-compatible Super VGA card |
| Storage: 2 GB available space | Storage: 2 GB available space |
| Sound Card: Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card | Sound Card: Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card |
The Book
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream book was written in one night in 1966 by Harlan Ellison and published by Galaxy Publishing Corp. It was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction magazine.
The story is set against the backdrop of World War III, where a supercomputer named AM, wipes out humanity except for five people. AM kept them alive only to torture them as that was a great way to revenge on humanity since they were his creators.
The story of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream book won a Hugo Award in 1968. It was later reprinted by the Library of America and collected in volume two of American Fantastic Tales.
Today you can find the original I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream short storybook as a collectible or you can find it included in American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now.
In conclusion, I found both the book and the game super interesting and definitely intense! Given the time the book I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream was written, it’s amazingly close to today’s reality and that is what makes it scarier to me! Have you tried to play or even read the book? If you did what’s your opinion on that and how you translate it in today’s world? Let me know by leaving your comment below.
