It tells the story of Jack, a penniless alcoholic who is drinking his days away at the Avalon bar. One day he overhears a conversation between two customers, a woman and her lover, who are plotting to kill the woman's husband, and decides to save the husband. Matters are complicated by the fact that Jack drank too much, and suffers from intense hallucinations that blend with reality...
The game can be downloaded on GameJolt
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See also Frantic Franko: A Bergzwerg Gone Berserk, another game project by Igor Hardy.
The game provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: It turns out that when Jack was small, his mother tried to kill his father, and the father killed her in self-defense. It's no wonder Jack grew up deeply traumatized and became an alcoholic.
- Addled Addict: Both played straight and subverted with Jack. Yes, he's a drunkard who no longer distiguishes reality from hallucinations — but he still has his heart in the right place and wants to prevent the murder.
- Bittersweet Ending: Sure, Jack manages to save the husband — but the poisoned salt shaker, which the wife and the lover prepared to kill him, remains in the bar. The bartender and all the customers (except Jack) end up using it — and they all die.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: Well, not everybody — Jack, the husband, the wife, and the lover survive — but the rest of the bar customers (along with the bartender) all end up using salt from the poisoned salt shaker, and as a result, they all die.
- Film Noir: The game is strongly influenced by this genre.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: An unusual version. The good side of Jack's conscience is represented by a talking moose head that hangs in the bar, while the evil side of his conscience is represented by a fish that is also hanging on the bar's wall.
- How We Got Here: The game begins with Jack being interrogated by the police about what happened at the bar.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: Midway through the game, Jack passes out and relives his childhood memories to uncover a deeply buried trauma that has to do with the fact that his mother tried to kill his father, and the father killed her in self-defense.
- Loon with a Heart of Gold: Jack's alcoholism has driven him to borderline insanity, to the point that he's no longer able to distinguish between reality and hallucinations — and yet, he intends to do the right thing and prevent the murder.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: All the surreal events in the game are presumably just Jack's hallucinations — but sometimes he's able to do improbable things due to them, like lifting a very heavy bar table or knowing something that he couldn't have normally known about.
- Minimalism: The entire game is set in one room, namely the Avalon bar.
- Power Born of Madness: Jack's hallucinations sometimes help him, granting him superhuman strength and even something akin to extrasensory perception.
- Shout-Out:
- In the Avalon bar, there's a statuette of the Gold Guy from LucasArts' logo standing on the shelf.
- Jack's favourite childhood toy was a Charlie Foxtrot figure. Charlie Foxtrot is the protagonist of another AGS game, Charlie Foxtrot And The Galaxy Of Tomorrow.
- Unreliable Narrator: Jack, due to his hallucinations.
