Maniac Mansion is a 1987 point-and-click video game by Lucasfilm Games. It took me a long time to figure out how to categorize the game and find a focus point to dive in, partly because as a person accustomed to contemporary point-and-click, the unlimited gaming strategies in the limited gameplay of Manic Mansion overwhelmed me. While the game is definitely in the point-and-click puzzle-solving category, the unforeseen interactions in the game interface provide a new perspective for me to rethink the potential of media interactions.
The main story is pretty straightforward: Dave Miller and his friends strive to rescue his girlfriend Sandy Pantz, who was captured by a mad scientist whose mind was enslaved by a “sentient meteor.” In order to rescue her, the crew needs to break into the mansion of the mad scientist and figure out puzzles embedded in the “maniac mansion.” The mechanics are more diverse, but the ones that I wish to discuss further in detail are (1) the player’s freedom of choosing how to interact with objects in the rooms, and (2) the player’s strategic choice of recruiting only two to three members from the friend group to go into the mansion simultaneously.
The interface of Maniac Mansion consists of two major parts: the graphics that occupy the majority part at the middle of the screen, and the worded instructions that occupy almost one-fourth of the screen at the bottom. The instructions are the most shocking part when I first encountered the game: FIFTEEN VERBS indicating how players can interact with objects are listed — Push, Pull, Give, Open, Close, Read, Walk to, Pick up, What is (?!), Unlock, New Kid (!), Use, Turn on, Turn off, Fix. Instead of choosing to let the player interact with objects in the game space using a keyboard (like what most contemporary games tend to use), Maniac Mansion decides to get rid of all necessary keyboard input and let the players interact solely by clicking on a verb at the bottom and then click an object in the game space to carry out the desired action.
What this interaction mechanism immediately reminded me of is how the game builds up a dialogue across different media: a verb in text medium plus an object in image concept forms a transmedia sentence and turned into action within the virtual space. In a way, taking the keyboard out of the interaction purifies the objective of interaction for Maniac Mansion, which is to figure out the puzzle-solving process. Displaying all the possible interaction terms provides a clear message to the player without making the player remember which key to input for each verb (after all, there are 15), and could inspire unconventional combinations of interaction. It enables the player to explore possibilities using different combinations of Verb and Object (one object can be used differently with different verbs) and visualizes the collaborated process of narrative creation between the player and the game developer.
The choice of putting a such abundance of unnecessary verbs such as “What is” is also unprecedented. My personal speculation is that because there are so many “nostalgic” futuristic objects in the maniac graphics of Maniac Mansion, it provides the player a choice to access the explanation of an object instead of being told straight-forward. It also meets the intuitional response of the player — what is this?? To be given a choice to ask such a question is what I always wanted to do in point-and-click games, and this game provides possibilities to construct amusing sentences that hint at the humor of the developer.
The other mechanism which I will briefly touch upon is how the game allows players to choose who to enter the mansion. Among the six kids in Dave Miller’s friend group, each friend has different abilities that could be useful for solving puzzles in specific rooms. However, a limitation is placed on the player that there could only be up to three kids in the mansion including Dave himself. Also, the player cannot play as all three but switch between the playable characters. The usage of three playable characters provides a new perspective for puzzle solving: yourself as the team. The possibility to solve puzzles from so many different viewpoints and group combinations generates a high level of nonlinearity and greatly increases the re-playability of the game. The confinement set in the game mechanics in a way inspires more possibilities in the gaming process that lead to multiple different endings.
In general, Maniac Mansion impressed me with its crazy graphics, point-and-click interface, and difficult internal collaboration (which made me want to quit several times). The experience was even similar to reading a dark humor fantasy comic, and it is exciting to see how the game can become a transmedia space through player-game interaction.
