Missed Classic: Johnny Castaway (1992)

by a Random Reviewer

The other genres get all the credit, even though adventures have always been the superior genre.  So many action games have inspired movies, such as Doom, Tomb Raider, Need for Speed, and the Super Mario Brothers series.  Heck, they even got people to pay to see a movie that was really just an advertisement for Mario 3!  

But there’s very few adventure games that have succeeded in that way.  In fact, there’s only one.  (Rumor has it that Les Manley was copied to make a Steve Carell film, but I don’t buy that.)  

Enter today’s game, Johnny Castaway, a 1992 classic from the team at Sierra On-Line.  Dynamix lead Jeff Tunnel did much of the work, causing the game to be noticed by filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, taking a break from directing the smash hit Death Becomes Her. Tom Hanks didn't take much convincing to star in it. According to the press at the time, he took one look at the game and instantly signed on to the movie project.

The plot is incredibly simple: you’re trapped on a small island and need to escape back to the real world.  But the game world, although just a few square feet, is expansive.  

One of the earliest puzzles I encountered was the need to eat.  When I found the fishing rod, I started to fish, but then real life took me away from the game for a few hours.  That’s when I started to see the beauty of the game.

When I first started fishing, around lunch time, the game was in daylight.  When I was able to return to my game, later that night after dinner, the game world had noticed the change in time and was in night mode.

That’s somewhat revolutionary for most game companies, but not for Sierra, who revolutionized this feature in King’s Quest 4.  Until the second Grand Theft Auto game came out more than half a decade after this game, it’s a nice touch that really wasn’t repeated enough.

I was able to catch many different colored fish and even an octopus, but I wasn’t a match for him.  He chased me up the tree, and then darted back into the ocean.  

It turned out that it was just a red herring, no pun intended.  This game is filled with them.  Unlike some other games, I felt like I was still having fun with each new adventure.  But, you see, they seemed like unnecessary quests at the time, but they’re an important part of the endgame for me.  We’ll get there later, though.

At one point, I took some sticks, rubbed them together, and made a fire.  It helped me keep warm, and also let me cook the fish I caught.  

I also sent a message in a bottle, climbed the coconut tree and dived into the ocean for some swimming, and took a nap.

I used my spyglass to look for help, and I guess I didn’t time it right.  When I looked East, a plane flew from the West.

The one time I did catch a glimpse of it, it crashed into the ocean.  Guess I’ll have to escape another way.

I even tried writing an SOS message and sending it out in a bottle, but no luck.

That’s when I realized it was all futile.  The real moral of this game is to teach you an inner calm.

See, we are all trapped on islands, sometimes of our own designs.  It’s learning to find peace with it that’s difficult.  Once you realize this is the way forward, you’ve won, not just this unique adventure game, but also the game of life.

Final Rating

Puzzles and Solvability

The puzzles all were clearly defined, and had generally reasonable solutions.  Hungry?  Go fishing.  Lonely?  Talk to a mermaid swimming by.  Tired?  Wait till it gets dark out, and sleep in the gentile moonlight.

There’s no moon-logic puzzles here, not even at night.  Finally, the first game in the history of this blog to earn a score of 10 in this category.

Interface and Inventory

The inventory management is so fluid, it seems effortless all the time.  It’s as though the game already knows what you want it to do, and it happens.

The interface leaves a little to be desired, though.  Sometimes, the mouse cursor disappears from the screen, and returns looking like the standard Windows 3.11-era pointer.  A little disappointing, but it didn’t subtract too much from the enjoyment.  I’ll give it a score of 8.

Story and Setting

This is a classic tale about the futility of life.  Nearly a decade before the TV show The Office debuted, this was a game that reminded us that not only was escape from an office computer a futile goal, but one we really didn’t want to succeed at anyways.  Or need to.  It’s a nearly perfect tale, but it leaves out too much of what is really important in life.  So, knocking it down from 10, I’ll score it a 9.8.

Sound and Graphics

Well, the graphics were ahead of it’s time, using a technique that would later be popularized called “dithering”.  The sound, sadly, was serviceable, but I had trouble understanding what the voice actor was saying at times.  I want to give this a higher score, but I can’t:  8 is as high as I can go.

Environment and Atmosphere

You can feel the salt in the air, and the sand between your toes.  That’s solid writing, art, and story design.  It’s a no brainer that I’m scoring this a 10.

Dialog and Acting

Johnny is well-acted, and communicates his thoughts and impressions quite well.  That’s good, because one of the low points of this game is the dialog.  It’s a little too low-key most of the time, and clearly stolen from a famous TV show of the era.  Sorry, this game is getting a 4 here.

The math: 10+8+9.8+8+10+4=49.8 / .6 = 83

Which means we have a new top game on the blog!  Indeed, you’d be an April Fool not to play this one online yourself!  I think you’ll figure out the controls easily enough, without a manual.