Craig

Remember all of those little "escape the room" type games you would play after school on the internet way back when? No? Am I really getting that old?

Regardless, fans of short "escape the room" types of games are sure to find a bit of what they love in Craig, a short puzzle game created in roughly a week in RPG Maker MV. From what I understand, Pai has put this together as something of a demo and would like to see how this pans out before evolving it into something more substantial. So let's take a quick look at Craig to see what it has to offer.

Due to the game's length and nature, please expect some minor spoilers in this review.

Craig pits you as the titular potion shop dealer whom has little to say and wants nothing more than to take a stroll to his potion shop and start the work day. However, it seems that his efforts have been met with some sinister resistance, and the door to his house has been barred shut. With few options available to him, Craig must find a way to escape his house.

One of Craig's biggest selling points is it's simple visuals, all rendered in monochrome black and white. The art style actually works to the game's advantage, making all of the room's intractable objects stand out with distinction, and I never had any trouble remembering what was what, or where as I was trying to escape the room.

I must say that I grew attached to Craig's little house and I almost felt like I never truly wanted to leave it, not just because I grew attached to the visuals, but also because every object had a story to tell. In most "escape the room" types of game, developers really never give the objects much distinction that helps me to remember key points later on. But Craig never forgets the inanimate objects that he tries to talk to, and neither will you.



The puzzles themselves were fairly rudimentary and didn't require much beyond finding every item and exhausting my options with objects, since there was no penalty for doing anything wrong and you couldn't do anything out of order. There was only one segment I found myself hung up on, resulting from an object in Craig's room that had spanned two tiles whereas everything else only had one possible interaction point. I think if that particular object had been more clearly marked as two distinct points, it would have been a bit more consistent and less frustrating.

There is a second area in Craig, butI spent the majority of the game in the first area as the solution to the second room was fairly simple. The second area seems to be unfinished, and featured a few NPCs to talk to but with even fewer objects to inspect than the first. I'm eager to see how that and future areas pan out if Craig ever becomes a full-length game.

Thankfully, it's easy to forgive the simple puzzle style thanks to the game's humor. Since every object has a full list of interactions to perform, at least one or two of them is going to give you a good chuckle. Unless, of course, you're someone who does actively try to talk to your toilet and appliances and just stare at Craig with crushing guilt and empathy for this poor little man.

So is Craig worth expanding into a full game? It absolutely is. And I certainly hope this short, 15 minute excursion isn't the end of our little plague mask-donning friend and his potion shop. With a bit of refining and some more complex puzzles, Craig is sure to shine bright in his monochrome world someday. This game has a story to tell, and I hope we get to see it to its end.