Bad Machine

Bad Machine is an interactive text adventure, much like All Roads which we saw last week. Upon opening and exploring the Bad Machine world, we see some immediate and confounding differences between the two. First off, this one puts you into the mind of a robot that is supposed to be doing some kind of work, but has instead become a 'Bad Machine,' a robot that has become self-aware. The status readout that the game delivers the player about his character reads 'Compliance 0.00%' which I was excited about. It's symbolic, both because the character is not doing its job, and the player is completely ignorant to any means of compliance.

I liked how Bad Machine twists the traditional text-based RPG. This is a format that was the forerunner to games like WOW and Fallout and Mass Effect—a sort of textual maze that required the player to both translate a text-only interface into the perception of an imagined three-dimensional world, and be familiar with necessary commands in order to manipulate this imagined environment accurately.

Bad Machine uses this ancient interface to its advantage, producing a believable, code-like appearance that adds to the realism of the work rather than detracting from it. The player must adjust his character's internal systems to correct errors and avoid detection. He must 'scan' the environment instead of looking around. He can retrieve information about other units, items, and boundaries present in the environment. We can index other machines and see their serial numbers, proposed actions, and intent. We even get information about the parts that make up their bodies. We can even exchange our parts for theirs.

What is most interesting, however, is the cohesive syntax that the Bad Machine interface uses. Phrases like "good machine" and "bad machine" and "compliance" permeate the work. Everything comes down to whether or not these working robots are doing their tasks without question; ironically, Bad Machine does not allow the player to pretend to do work, or even describe the task that the character is supposed to be doing. This means that there is no tricking the Drones that come searching for you, and beyond that, it means that this whole game is about searching for purpose and meaning. The concept itself plays with an existential thematic that provides a fantastic foundation for this work.

Supposedly, there are ways to both interfere with the goings-on of the factory the game is set in, though I am not sure how to do any of that. Supposedly it is possible to hunt down the 'queen' robot, kill her and become the directing authority of the factory, too. But I haven't pulled that off either. I did get myself to one ending though, but only with the help of a walkthrough attached to hint forums.

I would suggest checking this out for yourselves, too, if you intend to play through this some more:

It proved very helpful to me.

Another tool that might not have appeared useful at first is the help command. Typing 'help' will bring you to a list of menus that identify the more confusing commands needed to interface with bad machine, i.e. a list of binary strings that make up the syntax of language that the machines use. 000, for instance is 'NO' and 001 is 'YES.'

We also are introduced to a bunch system commands that seem to effect the game, but only behind the scenes. System Aware_Level (Low Medium High) is an example. System Entry_Ping (True False) is another. We will discuss these in greater detail in class though. For now, I'm signing off.