Status: Insane

December. The consumerist tradition month. The month where everyone in retail is made to work ungodly hours, and get pelted by shoppers who lost all semblance of mental balance long ago. The month of watching the family gossip unfold in a disarray of champagne and beer. The month of getting fat and blaming the weather instead of the gross amount of pudding and turkey you ate on Christmas Eve/Day. It’s enough to make you go insane.

Happy New Year, folks! I’m a Bethany Griffiths and this is Beta Test, where I—a self confessed noob—choose one game a month to go ham on. Whether I get better or get wrecked, you’ll get an unbiased review!

Now, with the holiday period coming to an end, I probably should have chosen something like Wii Fit Boxing as my game of choice this month. But oh no, I’m not about to give up my sloth lifestyle just yet. Maybe February…

ANYWAY, this month I’m taking you down a dark corridor, through multiple warp pads, and away from any bright lights that harbor gun wielding doctors, as I play Status: Insane—the addictive fast run maze game.

Here, you play as Igor, the mental patient with the demeanor of a chicken, who needs to escape the confines of delusional purgatory to reach happiness, peace, and as many funny hats as possible. That’s not hyperbole either. You reside in your ward room waiting to escape—which you will, through a complex series of puzzles that lead to graveyards, sewers, castle outskirts, experimental facilities, and finally to freedom. You just need to navigate through everything without dying or being pelted with tranquilisers first.

Make your way through the delightfully spooky layout, which reminds me of every early 3D animation game I played as a little kid, and you get to interact with characters like Greg – the angry patient, and your imaginary friend who is a floating explosive head, with a brain tongue. He has the best dialogue of the whole game, by the way, with his Russian accent and hipster beanie.

This game has modesty. It’s an indie run game that has a small cult following, and the developers are lovely. But beyond that, the puzzles aren’t impossible. I wasn’t pulling my hair out, trying to do a maze runner level for the trillionth time. In fact, I only spent a good three days finishing the main storyline. The only time I found myself frustrated was with my own reaction times, which caused me to get zapped by electrical pods, hit by needles, eaten by rats, blown up by floating heads, and demolished by crashing rockets.

So… you know… the usual stuff.

There is also a strong set of achievements throughout the game that you get by performing specific interactions, like finding all the hats, patient notes, and posters scattered about the universe. This works really well in the game’s favour because it has such a simple structure. The added elements of play give the gamer something to go back and look forward to, instead of finishing the game and going ‘well, that’s it.’

Because of my intense love for easy-to-play, maze games, and the general innovation and motivation shown through the game’s development, I would rate this:

2/5 Tranquiliser Darts for style

4/5 Tranquiliser Darts for plotline

5/5 Tranquiliser Darts for easiness

5/5 Tranquiliser Darts for NOSTALGIA

This game is one giant cliché. It cringes. It cringes like the Jimmy-Neutron-game-making-Cindy-Vortex-dumb cringes. It cringes like every-chase-level-of-Crash-Bandicoot cringes. It cringes like a-parent-taking-his-ten-year-old-to-a-Disney-film cringes. And it’s SO good. I loved every minute of gameplay that reminded me of the early days of 3D animation, every small jagged detail of the characters, every level that incorporated something new. This game was fantastic on the nostalgia scale, and I loved that little kids as well as adults would be able to enjoy it.

I’ve been a Bethany Griffiths, and this has been a stocking-stuffed Beta Test. A game review platform where I either got better or got wrecked, in the hopes that I can provide you all with a completely unbiased review.

Until next time…