The Terrible Old Man (2015 game, Steam version played for review)

Being a short adventure game isn’t an excuse to play it safe. If anything, you have to go wild to stand out. (My mind goes to “Moirai”, which took less than ten minutes to complete but resonated well enough that I’m referencing it several years after playing it.) “The Terrible Old Man”, an adaptation of a little-loved Lovecraft story, comes across like a Sierra game you’d need the strategy guide to see anything besides a fail state, except there isn’t a fail state because you’re SUPPOSED to see the fail state because that’s the point of the adaptation. Move along.

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