Return to Awz

Return to Awz was a game made for the RMN 4th Birthday event whereby entrants were tasked with making a game in 4 consecutive hours with the theme of 'sequels that should never be made, but that we will make anyway'. The title is a giveaway on this one, as it's meant to be the sequel to the Wizard of Oz and takes its name (mostly) from the 1985 cinematic sequel to the original children's tale, which has been called one of the scariest children's films ever made, the official sequel that is, not this game.

So, for anyone who knows the film, and the books used as the source material, they'd be looking for Dorothy and Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion or even Tik Tok and Ozma. They'd be disappointed. Whilst there are characters of that name or close to it, Dorofie rather than Dorothy, Todough for Toto for example they're not what I would consider to be recognisable. I'm also not sure why the developer felt the need to change the names, since the last of the published Oz books entered the public domain in 1996. As running gags go though, it's at least imaginative.


Since the East was squashed and the West melted, you make do.

As to the others characters made famous by the books and film, well they were supposed to be in the game if the epilogue explanation is anything to go by but unfortunately they are all no-shows. The developer does at least let the player know what it was they were supposed to be playing and the plot as envisaged if he'd managed his time better and had actually added any content beyond the opening map and a short expository sequence that follows.

It's a shame really; I would have liked to see what names he gave those well known characters in this extremely short and quite pointless game. There is no reason to download and play this, it's less than 2 minutes from go to whoa and most of that is taken up playing portions of a couple of tracks from the developer's old garage band. Though the music does have some merit, it's time to click those heels and leave.