![]() ![]() Whatever strengths Yahtzee may possess, subtle and insightful cultural satire outside the narrow domain of video games is not one of them, but I think this is largely for lack of trying. A significant chunk of the book deals with the question of how today’s organised religions would react to incontrovertible proof of the existence of magic and supernatural beings. ![]() In Existentially Challenged, Yahtzee turns the clock back to the 2000s and tackles organised religion. Much of the humour in Differently Morphous comes from applying 2010s social justice language to supernatural beings – demon-possessed individuals are called “dual-consciousness” and the book’s title, “differently morphous”, is a euphemism used to refer to slime monsters. Characters are fleshed out a bit more, ongoing plots are furthered, and all this is illustrated with an oversupply of tortured metaphors and similes (although he has toned this down somewhat since Will Save the Galaxy for Food).įew writers can resist making some reference to or comment on current events in their novels. Between a grounded setting in a real place the author knows well, a shake-up in the usual character roster, and certain amount of tonal similarity to his horror games (his strongest work IMO), Differently Morphous was a much-needed breath of fresh air in Yahtzee’s written oeuvre.Įxistentially Challenged is the sequel to Differently Morphous and delivers much the same experience as the original. Rather than yet another sneering wise-guy protagonist in a semi-parodic fantasy/sci-fi setting, the story follows a nervous young Type-A woman in basically modern Britain, with a supernatural twist. I bought it on Audible 3 and it quickly became my favourite work of his. The next book he wrote was Differently Morphous. Particularly grating was his need to elaborate on every synonym as if his books are just extended Zero Punctuation episodes, showing how one can over-play to one’s strengths. Will Save the Galaxy for Food, a comedic sci-fi work about space adventurers, just felt like a rehash of previous work, and at this point I thought that maybe I was just overexposed to Croshaw’s particular tics and subject matter and should stop buying his books. Jam, the post-apocalyptic novel featuring man-eating jam, was okay – the central joke wore thin quite quickly and so did most of the others. I liked Mogworld, a comedic fantasy that takes place inside an off-brand World of Warcraft, but in some ways I felt like I was reading a third iteration of the two novels mentioned above. Since then, I’ve kept up with Yahtzee’s work in the realms of both game development and fiction writing, but for a while I found myself less and less interested in each book he released. 1 Yahtzee’s prodigious output of freely available writing seemed squarely aimed at a nerdy teenage boy with lots of spare time and a mobile internet connection over which only text was affordable. Having a parallel insatiable hunger for free written content, I read through the archives of his comedy site and all of his free fiction, including two unpublished novels. ![]() Being a teenager with an insatiable hunger for freeware adventure games, I soon played through the rest of his catalogue. I first discovered Yahtzee Croshaw’s work through his highly acclaimed freeware point-and-click adventure game, 5 Days a Stranger. Review: Existentially Challenged 27 February 2022 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |