Elevator Inaction

Somewhere out there, sitting in a poorly lit room, listening to Rush, there's a man working on the next great Atari 2600 game. The year isn't 1981. No, no, my friend. It's 2007. And while that game isn't ready yet, many are. Homebrew games. Created by dedicated fans of long dead gaming systems.

Released this past summer, Elevators Amiss is a hombrew game that, in my humble opinion anyway, misses the mark. First, don't put the word "amiss" in your title. It gives way too much ammunition to smart-ass game reviewers. Second, don't make the enemy a box.


The premise of this game makes absolutely no sense. The player controls a maid in a hotel where the elevators have "taken on a life of their own!" Gotcha. I'll use the stairs. Only in order to get to the stairs, I have to avoid the out-of-control elevators. I'm no architect, but elevators normally live in elevator shafts, not hotel hallways. As long as I don't try to get on one of them, they can't possibly be an obstacle to me.

The controls make absolutely no sense either. On the normal and expert settings, the maid can't stop moving once she starts across a floor, she can only change direction to avoid the elevators that shouldn't be a threat to her anyway. Is she supposed to wait until the moment she can shoot all the way across the floor to the staircase, or do the back-and-forth Pac-Man dance until the way is clear?

There isn't a terrible amount of variation from level to level. The colors change and the speeds of the elevators becomes more varied. There's no variation whatsoever in the annoying music, which plays nonstop throughout the game. The only other sound effect is that of the maid going up the stairs. Visually, the game is very clean-looking. The maid sprite looks very nice and the animation of her running is cute.

If only she were running through a more inspired game.