Adventure Gamers - Forums

The Bum

This really is a little gem from 2013.

You play a homeless man who communicates with the world around him via a sock puppet (well… basically just a sock) on his hand. He doesn’t have much in life, but when a bully comes and punctures his football the time has come to take action and right some wrongs in his life!

The game looks great, in a simple but clean style, with a good amount of animations. It’s funny in a whacky off-beat way with a few football jokes in there too. The characters are pretty cool, including a memorable local superhero, and there are certainly a few smiles and laughs along the way. Puzzles are fairly traditional and the “sock puppet” interface keeps things interesting too. On the whole it has that “golden age” feel to it, controlling like Sierra but feeling like Lucasarts.

There are one or two slight down sides, in that the dialogue can be a bit long here and there - if the humour isn’t for you that is - and there is a little pixel hunting involved at one point.

I replayed this recently and it has been updated with a new soundtrack. I’m actually not sure whether this is an improvement or not, as the old sounds were simple but effective. Nothing to complain about though, the new sound track is fine.

If you’re up for a couple of hours adventuring in a whacky, surreal and absurd world then I really can’t recommend this enough.

I was really curious to find out whether the bald man is a superhero or a bully so I downloaded it and gave it a whirl. Looks like a neat game, with a clever and “mature” comedy writing!

My only complaint is the dreadful hot spot detector, you really need to nail it on the millimeter, but it’s never in the middle of the object.

Hey, I remember this one.
I didn’t play it, but I remember it getting mentioned here a few times and getting very favourable comments.

The concept sounds like an absurder version of The Beaver.