i’ve been looking forward to this gmae since i first saw hal @turing-tested talk about it a week or two ago, and the release couldn’t have been more perfect. sbahjtgaw is such a perfect blend of humor, romance, trivia, and half-finished plot line that there’s no way you could finish the 6 minutes of gmaeplay and feel disappointed. a more detailed review, with gmae spoilers included, is under the cut; please avoid reading this if you haven’t played the gmae, which you can find nifty download links for here.
act won begins with an endearingly shitty title screen. you can start a new gmae, load a save, set your gmae preferences, get help, or quit like a chump. starting the gmae begins the neon genesis evangelion opening; this can be skipped with a simple click or a press of the spacebar, but i prefer to watch it all the way through to get the full experience.
after the intro, the scene opens on the white house, where obmama is breaking up with izzy. izzy is soon ushered away, tears and all, so that sweet bro can take his rightful place on screen. you play the gmae as obmama’s cousin, who you can name yourself after obmama asks sweet bro to take you on a date.
the date begins at the washington monument, with mount rushmore as the background (an endearing touch, and something that adds more character and hilarity to the gmae). sweet bro rattles off a few paragraphs of information about the monument, at which time you are prompted to a multiple choice question. clicking “interesting” prompts another question (“not really” will end the gmae, and “absoutley” will continue several more paragraphs of information) while “go on” will continue several more paragraphs of information.
after awhile sweet bro decides to see if you’re paying attention; the scene switches to a jeopardy game, with sweet bro asking you a total of two (2) trivia questions about the monument. answering the first question incorrectly prompts a nigh philosophical speech from sweet bro; the bad end warning flashes up on the screen, followed by kazoo kid trap remix.
if you answer the first question correctly, the second question is a manual input answer. i’ll admit it had me stumped for quite awhile, despite being so obvious by the time i got it-- if you need to ask help for the question, try thinking a little first! getting this question wrong after getting the first question correct prompts sweet bro to lecture you about paying attention, then repeat the last several paragraphs (while a jeopardy music remix plays) before bringing you back to the jeopardy game.
once both questions have been correctly answered, sweet bro seems to be overjoyed. he’s about to ask you (presumably) on a date, when he suddenly remembers that he has a previous engagement to attend-- lunch with a friend. the screen fades out, and when it returns both sweet bro and hella jeff ask if you’d like to join them for lunch. this is the good end to the gmae.
after some music plays, the words BLOOPER REAL pop up, and clicking or pressing the spacebar brings you back to the title screen. the implication, clearly, is that the gmae is perfect as is, and no hals, obmamas or sweet bros made mistakes while creating it.
all in all, sbahjtgaw is a delightful gmae with many deeper layers of meaning and thought-provoking events. i sincerely hope that hal will, in the future, be possessed to make, perhaps, an ACT TOO.
