Escape from the Crazy Place is a 92,000 word Twine game in the CYOA tradition. Accompanied by a deranged, hamburger vending clown, the player must make it alive through the forest of the Ostrich People, avoid becoming ‘jellybeanerized’, survive the mutiny on the ‘Milky Way’, find a matching pair of poulaines, fathom the mysteries of the marmalade Sat Nav and milk the Cow of Honour, amongst other adventures, in order to escape from the ‘Crazy Place’.
Escape from the Crazy Place has been in production on and off since it began in manuscript form back in 1984. An interactive round-robin story, Escape includes contributions from around 20 different authors, but the bulk of the text is by myself and my friend Loz Etheridge, with considerable new material by Mark Bailey. A version of the game was released in 2006, but when I realised that the current edition was two and half times the size of that release, I thought it might be worth doing an official “relaunch”.
The game is perhaps the ultimate expression of the Time Cave design pattern. Sam Kabo Ashwell’s description of this pattern could almost be a description of the game:
Which is to be expected from a work which for thirty years we have been making up as we go along. (The Twine node map for the game can be seen here.) The game is really nothing more or less than a joyous expression of silliness written by a bunch of friends who like to take time off from being grown-ups. The story is not over yet, and continues to grow. Play it if you like improvisation comedy, Rick and Morty, The Cave of Time. Avoid it if you like linear, slice of life games which tackle life’s serious issues, or if your name is Mike Harris.
For those of you who missed last week’s launch party - here’s a video - of the interactive reading with additional material by some of London’s finest improvisers!