I originally intended this article to be a full-fledged review of the recently released…thing, Vidiot Game. After playing it for a couple of hours, though, I’m convinced that there’s no way I could actually review this “game.” I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself, “Addam, it can’t be that hard to review a game, even if this one is kind of weird.” So, let me ask you this: how do you articulate the quality of a game where the chief gameplay elements consist of burying dead horses to appease the gods, running away from time vortexes, injecting yourself with strange drugs you find in the desert and merging your body with a swarm of hornets?

Vidiot Game is perhaps one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen in a video game. It might be too weird for some (ok, probably for most), but if you enjoy weird stuff like I do, Vidiot Game might be one of the most interesting things released in recent memory. Do a backwards flip to cause a time vortex to disappear to learn more about this weird game.

If you have any thoughts that there might be a plot in this game, you are sadly mistaken. This is a game that randomly has you playing as an anthropomorphized frying pan, smoking mushroom or potato. The game is broken up into multiple sections and each of these acts as a sort of “mini-game”, though that term should be used loosely. While there are a couple of sequences that have actual “gameplay” in them, such as one sequence where you have to ski down a mountain to avoid an avalanche, much of the game plays as a bizarre game show.

You will be presented with a situation and will have to determine the correct outcome. For example, at one point your character will come upon a rabid dog and you will have the chance to choose to make friends with it, run away from it or fight it. The obvious answer is to run away. If you choose to try to make friends with it, you’ll die. The most interesting answer, however, is if you choose to fight it. This causes your character to be bitten and infected with a virus. This virus causes the graphics and music to degenerate and if you make these types of choices enough, the game turns into this weird nightmare world where colors are distorted, the graphics are almost impossible to make out and all the colors are changing.

Another instance has your character dying in the desert and they stumble upon Satan. If you choose to worship him, the world will become more terrifying. Choosing to barter with him will do nothing and if you ignore him, you will die.

When the graphics change, it actually becomes way harder to see what is going on and as a result, the mini-games become way harder. In one mini-game, you have to keep pressing the A button to sprint through a race while moving your character on screen to avoid hitting hurdles that block your way. If you are hallucinating enough, it’s nearly impossible to see anything. If you fail these mini-games, you’ll die and have to restart the experience all over again.

What makes Vidiot Game so interesting, though, is that much of the game is dynamic in nature. There is no pre-determined series of events. They are just randomly placed as you proceed through the game. It actually makes it far more replayable, since there are any number of ways to actually proceed through the game. You can try to not get any hallucinations or you can try to get the game as jacked up as possible.

It’s actually very reminiscent of the original Playstation game LSD. Released only in Japan, this game had you travelling through a psychedelic dream world that was consistently changing. Each dream sequence you had was unique and, at times, terrifying. That feeling of interest with a tinge of dread was something I consistently felt playing Vidiot Game. For the first hour or so, it felt like anything could happen, especially when the game began to freak out. If nothing else, it was fascinating to watch.

Once again, though, Vidiot Game is not for everyone. I can easily see some gamers thinking it is far too weird in what it does. While that’s a fair thought, if you are interested in seeing exactly what is so interesting about it, go check it out. It’s a freeware game on the PC and it only costs 80 Microsoft Points on the Xbox Live Indie channel. For those prices, it’s easily worth it.