With a collection of five novels, a radio show, and a blockbuster Hollywood film, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is a unique tale filled with lots of charm and laughs. Unsurprisingly, many popular stories make their way into the games industry and so in 1984, the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Game was born. This text-based adventure game puts players through a whirlwind of crazy scenarios that can have them laughing one moment and yelling profanities the next.
The game is based upon the events of the books, TV show, and radio series. The player is put in the shoes of the titular character, Arthur Dent, who wants nothing more than to stay home and drink tea. Unfortunately for him, an alien race known as the Vogons plan to destroy Earth and Arthur along with it. The player must guide Arthur off of the doomed planet before being rescued by the Heart of Gold. From there, he must get to the planet Magrathea alongside a unique cast of characters.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Game is overall quite a funny experience. With Douglas Adams being responsible for all the storytelling and writing, the humor of the iconic book series takes center stage. In fact, just being killed in the game will elicit some witty comments by The Guide, one of which simply reads: “For a dead person you’re talking too much.” These funny moments make the game enjoyable and motivate the player to explore the world around them. Unfortunately, as a text based game, the game is very unintuitive. Different text-adventures games require distinct grammar and formatting structures for an answer. While Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy does provide the player with instructions, they’re bound to hit a road block quite frequently.
Why The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Game Is So Infamous
While Douglas Adams’ involvement in the game is the primary appeal, his writing style makes the game extremely difficult to go through. Given that The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy feels like a compendium of short stories rather than a linear tale, much of the game is one huge mess. Players will spend more time trying to arbitrarily guess what needs to be done than actually progressing the story. For example, early on the player will need to collect a catalogue of items in order to get the Babel Fish (a translation device). Upon collecting said materials, the player must then execute 12 actions in an exact order if they want to succeed. These moments make the game extremely frustrating and nearly impossible to get through. Plus, while some instances require specific inputs, other moments require the player to do nothing. Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy quickly becomes one big guessing game rather than an adventure.
Due to how complicated the game is to play, there is an officially published walkthrough guide to aid players. Given that without the guide there is little way to progress the story, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy becomes more like an interactive novel than a game. There is little freedom in what players can actually do of their own volition and the rigidity found in the most arbitrary of scenarios provide no room for creativity. The entire game is so unintuitive that many claim it feels almost as if Douglas Adams is trolling players. Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy has extremely high expectations of the player and without a compendium of knowledge on the subject or a walkthrough guide to reference, the game is nearly impossible to complete.
Having said this, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy does have its charm. If the player is able to brave past the frustrating moments, it’s truly a fun and humorous experience. Plus, since the game has connections to more than just the movie, there is a lot of amusing fanfare for the most diehard of players to enjoy. The game is free to play on the BBC website and was recently updated to celebrate The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy’s 30th anniversary.