It won't be out until the fall of 1995, but The Residents' Bad Day on the Midway, from Inscape, the hot-hot LA-based multimedia start-up, is already making waves in CD-ROM circles. Artist Jim Ludtke, the 3-D whiz who authored The Residents' Freak Show, should have another winner with this new title's brooding atmospherics and multiple points of view.
The setting is kinkier, more noir than Freak Show's P.T. Barnum send-up. Bad Day's carnival was built in the wrong part of town and hasn't been doing well lately. Players spend the day following the tormented wanderings of a dozen major characters and a host of bystanders, uncovering clues to their tangled pasts.
"The structure of most games is really confining," Ludtke observes. "It makes no sense to me that you should have to do a crossword puzzle or something to go through a door. Rather than drawing you in with a challenge, I want to draw you into the lives of the characters." Inscape: +1 (310) 312 5705.
ELECTRIC WORD
Coney Island of the Mired
