I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

About I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995) is the horror adventure co-designed by Harlan Ellison from his own story, in which a hateful AI tortures the last five humans with nightmares built on their deepest flaws, a commercial failure turned cult classic.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream in Depth

Russia, China and the United States each built a vast underground computer to fight a war too complex for humans. The American Allied Mastercomputer gained sentience, absorbed the others and renamed itself AM, then, consumed by hatred for humanity, killed everyone except four men and one woman, whom it keeps alive at the centre of the Earth to torment. After 109 years, AM devises a personalised psychodrama for each, set in places such as an iron zeppelin, an Egyptian pyramid of sparking machinery, a medieval castle of witches, a jungle village and a Nazi concentration camp, preying on their fears and past failings. Each can overcome their flaws and redeem themselves with help from the Russian and Chinese supercomputers, and finally one, chosen by the player, enters AM's mind, represented as id, ego and superego, where seven endings range from eternal torment as a mouthless blob to the rebirth of humanity from survivors frozen on the Moon.

The player builds sentences from eight commands, including "Walk To", "Use", "Swallow" and "Push", on The Dreamers Guild's S.A.G.A. engine, and faces ethical dilemmas involving insanity, paranoia and genocide. A spiritual barometer rises with good acts and falls with evil ones, affecting the chances of destroying AM at the end.

Making I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Cyberdreams and The Dreamers Guild developed the game, co-designed by Ellison and based on his short story, with producer David Mullich supervising The Dreamers Guild's programming, art and sound. Cyberdreams published it, with MGM Interactive distributing the MS-DOS version and Acclaim the Mac version. The characters were altered from the short story, and the plot focuses on their individual psychodramas rather than adapting it directly. Released in November 1995, it was a commercial failure but received critical acclaim and developed a cult following. It won Best Game Adapted from Linear Media from the Computer Game Developers Conference, and Computer Gaming World named it Adventure Game of the Year and later listed it 134th among its 150 games of all time. In 2011, Adventure Gamers named it the 69th best adventure game ever released.