The Hitchhiker's Guide to Rage Quitting

In an attempt to do a bit of research on text-based adventure games, I started playing the online version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Knowing the story, I thought it’d be fun. Which it was. The first fifty tries.

I never managed to make it past the intro scenario in which my house was bulldozed and I unfortunately always died – it took me at least ten futile attempts before I successfully managed to get out of the room before the house collapsed. The game supposedly offers a save and restore function, however I was not able to get this function to work (again, several futile, painful, and emotionally distressing attempts), and every death was therefore permanent, resetting the game with all progress lost. So when I died quite suddenly after having had an otherwise cheerful moment of mini-celebration because I had gotten to the point in the story where you meet Ford Prefect (which I am embarrassed to admit is far too early in the story), I quit.

Later on, I found a well-hidden info sheet with useful commands, but alas, I was far too agitated to take up the game again. But someday. Someday, I’ll complete the game and get a score of 400 instead of 10 which is my sad excuse for a personal high score. Because if there’s one thing that’s particularly unsatisfying, it’s rage quitting a game that you still kind of want to complete, and even more unsatisfying is rage quitting a game that you think you know the plot of because you once saw a movie based on the same story, but you can’t be entirely sure as you haven’t completed the game.

I’ll leave you with the beautiful words of Nickelback: “Someday, somehow I'm gonna make it all right but not right now”.

The game can be played online here and here (with fancy graphics).