TRF (Week 2): Spooks 'n Stuff in A Small Talk at the Back of Beyond

A Small Talk at the Back of Beyond is an intriguing little game. Created by scriptwelder, the Flash game starts off with you waking up in a futuristic room. Disorientated, you discover that the only other thing with you is a computer. The AI explains the situation to you, but something about what it says and the environment doesn't quite line up. The rest of the game is up to you.

One of the coolest things about this game is how you play it. The left-hand side of the game is a console that allows you to communicate with the AI, and the right side is the room. Instead of selecting a choice of what you say, you actually type out whatever you want. However there are troubles with this feature, the most obvious being that what you say always doesn't get though.

This may not sound like a enormous problem, but in actuality, it made A Small Talk at the Back of Beyond much more difficult to clear. What was a thoughtful and creative implementation became the biggest problem for the game. If you were one word off from a recognized sentence, the AI wouldn't register and you would be left stumped. Eventually this got to me and I ended up consulting a walkthrough.

Putting the game content and play aside, the pixel art was nice to the eyes and the theme was set up well with chilling music and ambiance. Considering that scriptwelder is a single guy (who supposedly doesn't speak English a whole lot), there have to be huge props given to him. Like any good text adventure, there are multiple endings; some dead ends and two or three actual endings. All of the actual endings were (heart-tearing ultimatum included) a fantastic twist and revelation of the whole thing.

Ultimately you can overlook the problem of player input and play the game. A Small Talk at the Back of Beyond takes little to no time to play, but leaves you wildly questioning yourself after. So if you have a few minutes of your time to spare, why not?

Play It: Armor Games