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SEPTEMBER 17 . 07
Watch Eivi .. PLAY ME!
At first I thought the title of this game was “Watch Elvi,” Elvi of course being the plural form of Elvis. And who doesn't want to sit around watching Elvi? That's fun for hours. But it turns out the game is Watch Eivi, “eivi” apparently being German for “the timer run out while you try to figure out what the hell you're supposed to be doing here.”
The title screen greets you with a little pot-bellied, legless spaceman guy giving you some kind of two-fingered salute. There's a field to enter your name, and his helmet is flashing “start.” Other than the equally helpful “restart,” though, this is the only English you'll get.
The game consists of a grid of multicolored blocks, but clicking on them doesn't seem to do anything. Three entirely different timers warn you that you only have a minute to complete whatever the task at hand might be – one counting down from sixty, one counting up to sixty, and a progress bar that advances from both ends toward the middle and also gives you the remaining time as a percentage. There are no instructions whatsoever, even in German. Please understand that I am now utterly obsessed with trying to grasp how this game is played. Watch Eivi is my white whale.
None of my arrow or enter keys seem to have any affect on the grid. Mashing my keyboard resulted in one of the grid squares being hilighted in yellow, and a careful survey of the keyboard revealed the tab key was responsible. Progress! And once I had a square hilighted I could move around the grid with my arrow keys – kind of. Up goes up and to the left, left also goes up and to the left, down goes down and to the left, and right goes up and to the right. But at some point I wandered down off the grid and started highlighting the timers and such, so it's possible that none of this has anything to do with the game at all.
There's also a small random number hiding mysteriously in the bottom left coner of the screen, which I thought probably corresponded to a grid square, but after a few tries my number was 1132. There are only 375 squares. Also, it's game number 23 on the “65 crappy flash games for just $19.95” web site, so I think there might be some freaky illuminati stuff going on.
Sixty frustrating seconds invariably pass, and again and again I'm greeted with a personalized result screen in German: “Matt, So, Du hast jetzt 60 Sekunden Zeit gehabt um die 375 Steine wegzuklicken. Du hast 0 Steine geschafft. Das muBt Du aber noch üben!” Babel Fish gives me this translation: “So, you have to away-click now 60 second time had around the 375 stones. You created 0 stones. MuBt you however still practice!”
If anyone out there can help me understand any facet of this game, please, PLEASE send me an email. It's madness, and I feel like I'm just standing here confused, waiting for some frothing, oiled Spartan to kick me into a pit.
Madness? This is Waaaaatch Eeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiivvvvviiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!
Think you've played a game this bad or worse? E-mail me and tell me about it!
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