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About the StoryYou are Bonnie Noodleman, Ordinary Well-Adjusted Teen-Ager, on an ordinary well-adjusted drive up Make-Out Mountain--until some gooey monstrosity from beyond the stars guzzles your boyfriend's brains clean out of his head! Jeepers, what a pickle! Can you convince the townsfolk you're not koo-koo, or is your thinker next on the alien menu?Explore beautiful Canyonville, New Mexico, at the height of the 1959 Pine Nut Days festival, interact with a full cast of NPCs, perform beat poetry, tamper with baked goods, use hideously powerful space weapons to win cheap carnival trinkets, and try to avoid getting a Reputation! Game Details
First Publication Date: October 1, 2015
Current Version: Unknown Development System: Inform 7 Forgiveness Rating: Merciful IFID: 6AB5C19A-198E-4703-B83A-E2581AD420D6 TUID: f55km4uutt2cqwwz Referenced in The Mary Jane of Tomorrow, by Emily Short |
Awards
Nominee, Best Game; Nominee, Best Puzzles; Nominee, Best NPCs; Winner, Best Individual Puzzle - 2015 XYZZY Awards
1st Place - 21st Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2015)
Editorial Reviews
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
As poor Bonnie Noodleman you have just seen your date have his brain straight-up guzzled. You leg it down from Make-Out Mountain and thus begins a textual parody of 1950s B-movie shlock. There is a magazine personality quiz which you do at the beginning of the story that determines your characteristics and what things you carry (I got a handy switchblade!). It’s something Bethesda probably wishes they could have come up with for the beginning of Fallout. I smiled and chuckled a lot.
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Member Reviews
| Average Rating:  Number of Reviews: 7 Write a review |
Most Helpful Member Reviews
Spine-Tingling Text-O-Rama, November 24, 2015Winner, Miss Human Compass Junior Orienteer, 1956
Winner, Pine Nut Days Girls’ Grocery-Balancing Competition, 1958
I think this succinctly encapsulates the game's intent. It's a traditional text adventure that is self-aware about its tropes, and it's going to exploit them to have fun. And that's exactly what it does.
Structurally, the game is divided into a prologue followed by two main parts. The prologue is pretty much perfect. A character customization system built into an in-game magazine questionnaire, which then segues seamlessly into the action and establishes the setting, tone, and Bonnie's motivation all at once. It's great.
After the prologue, both of the game's two main halves are centered around object fetch-quests. You solve puzzles to collect items to deliver to an NPC in order to progress the story. When the first half concludes, you're treated to a satisfying action set-piece that feels like it will fundamentally alter the game. But then the dust settles, and not too much has changed, and you have to solve another puzzle sequence very similar to the one you just finished.
The second set of puzzles is actually better than the first, and the first set was already good. But the structure saps tension from the story right when things are starting to get dicey. I wanted the stakes to keep rising.
Of course the stakes were never going to be really high, because the game is a parody of B-movie horror. But parodies can have their own high stakes. And actually, the game is more a satire of American society "back in the day" than it is of horror films. It takes place on the cusp between the 50s and 60s. You've got Scooby-Doo hijinks, "ultramodern furniture" in "avocado, orange, and mustard-yellow," and the town fair has a Tomorrow Pavilion whose displays (including a robotic wife) are "glittering with the promise of tomorrow."
This reminded me a lot of The Venture Bros., which has a similar nostalgia for the era, even though it recognizes and criticizes the era's bigotry, repression, and naiveté. Brain Guzzlers is also critical, but it's never as scathing as Venture Bros. It's more interested in using the time period as a playful backdrop.
In the end, this is a very solid text adventure that will appeal to both sci-fi and horror fans, and it's got nice character illustrations too!
Well written, funny, parser-based interactive fiction., October 4, 2015Funny, great setting and characters, but most importantly a fully formed game, reacting well to player interaction with the environment. Fun, challenging, and sensible puzzles.
Fun, lighthearted (and subversive!) sci-fi piece, June 13, 2016None of the puzzles are particularly difficult, and primarily consist of 'find the right object' type quests, with simple but fun secondary mechanics. There are any number of red herring objects (based on one play: it's possible they have more utility or alternate puzzle solutions) that add a sense of depth and contribute to the comedic themes.
The dialogue is fun and peppered with classic 'old-timey' declarations--when you are offered the chance, try saying the 'worst' swear your character can imagine.
The writing is concise, terse, and flows nicely: this is a piece that has clearly been edited & written for readability, and the effort is greatly appreciated.
See All 7 Member Reviews
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Recommended Lists
Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! appears in the following Recommended Lists:Doug's Top Ten of IF Comp 2015 by Doug Orleans
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Polls
The following polls include votes for Brain Guzzlers from Beyond!:For Your Consideration - XYZZY-eligible NPCs of 2015 by verityvirtue
This is for suggesting non-player characters from games released 2015 who you think might be worth considering for Best NPCs/Best Individual NPC in the XYZZY awards. Leave the name (or namelessness) of the NPC (or NPCs) in the comment on...
Best cover art by MathBrush
What games have really good cover art?
For Your Consideration - XYZZY-eligible settings of 2015 by verityvirtue
This is for suggesting settings from games released 2015 which you think might be worth considering for Best Setting in the XYZZY awards. This is not a zeroth-round nomination. The category will still be text-entry, and games not...
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