Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt is a series of two online Adobe Flash games published and formerly available via the official Garfield website that involve the player controlling Garfield to find sugary sweet pastry snacks in a haunted mansion filled with monsters. There is no time limit, but Garfield does have a maximum of how many times he can be scared before he runs off and quits the game.
The first game was released in 2002 and an archived version can be played here
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The second game, Donuts of Doom, was released in 2003 and an archived version can be played here.
SPOILERS BELOW! Read at your own risk if you haven't played (and completed) the games yet.
The Scary Scavenger Hunt series of online games features examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Who put Lyman in the basement??
- How did Garfield end up back in the haunted house in the second game??
- And Your Reward Is Edible: The main goal and rewards for this game are sweet foods usually eaten for breakfast or dessert.
- Best Out of Infinity: In the Shell Game, you have to win 3 out of 5 rounds. Once you do, the skeleton you're playing against asks to go for 5 out of 7. You can either decline and get the donuts right then, or accept. Winning 5 out of 7 gets you the donuts.
- Big Eater: Garfield as usual, devouring all the donuts he found when the player wins the game.
- The Cameo:
- Jon is in the first game refusing to help Garfield and join him on the scavenger hunt but does give him some helpful tips. In the second game, he makes a woman's scream while taking a bath naked in the upstairs bedroom as the famous Psycho shower music plays. He also appears in the Labyrinth in a dead end, saying he's stuck for ages.
- Odie is in the second game, but all he does is scare Garfield by showing him he's been webbed up by spiders.
- Liz appears as a voodoo head in the second game.
- Creepy Basement: Lyman was found to be chained as a starving prisoner here. We never know who chained and put him there, or why he was taken prisoner.
- Creepy Changing Painting: In the second game, a painting of a man sitting in a chair keeps changing off-screen so that the man disappears from the picture altogether or the picture is flipped upside down.
- Digital Destruction: Because of an unknown cause, at the end of the first game you cannot see Garfield happily zipping off-camera to go eat the donuts. Instead, when you finish the last puzzle the screen immediately pans to Garfield lying down on the ground satisfied and full from eating them all.
- Hammerspace:
- In the second game, Garfield can actually walk through tiny mouse-holes in the wall and teleport into another room, but that's not the weirdest part yet. What is is that Garfield can actually teleport into a room when he entered a mouse-hole in a room on the opposite side of the house!
- Just how did Garfield carry all those pastries on him without a need for a backpack or cart?
- Harmless Villain: In spite of the game featuring a werewolf, a vampire, a mummy, a Frankenstein's monster, ghosts and all - there really is no graphic violence most likely because these games are intended for children. The "horror movie" monsters in the games don't seem too interested in attacking Garfield, they just want to give him a good scare and the worst physical harm they can inflict on Garfield is a heart attack. Who knows why they won't attack him - maybe it's because he's just a cat and the victims they go after are usually human.
- Haunted House: In the first game, Garfield went inside it reluctantly to find donuts. In the second game, he suddenly found himself in the basement and was brought back to the house against his own will. We never learn how he got back in or what abducted and brought him back there.
- Hedge Maze: In the second game, by collecting all the donuts and muffins, Garfield unlocks a hidden door in the library leading into a hedge maze, which he has to make his way through to escape from the haunted house.
- Losing Your Head: In the second game, Garfield can open the fridge to see the decapitated head of Orson Pig. In spite of just being a severed head, Orson is still able to warn Garfield to watch out for sneaky mice.
- Mascots Love Sugar: Perfection Pastries are about the only thing that can put both Garfield and Odie content enough to obey when you tell them to go to their boxes.
- Monster Mash: The inhabitants in the haunted house are ghosts, zombies, a vampire, a werewolf, a Frankenstein's monster, a mummy, and a fish-man. All hiding to give Garfield a good scare.
- Mythology Gag:
- Binky the Clown appears in toy form in the first game and bobblehead form in the second game.
- Lyman, who last regularly appeared in the comics in 1983, plays a critical role in the first game because you (Garfield) need him to find the Blueberry Muffins. In the second game, he's a decapitated head.
- Orson Pig and Wade Duck from Jim Davis' lesser-known U.S. Acres are in the second game. Fans who watched Garfield and Friends would know who they are.
- In the first game, all the library's books are named after real-life Garfield books - most are comic compilations, while the others are joke books ("Never Accept" and "Insults").
- In the memory music puzzle in the first game, the trumpet makes a composition that you frequently hear on Garfield and Friends. It goes like Do Do Do Me Sol Me Sol Me Do.
- Off with His Head!: The second game reveals Lyman's decapitated head if the player chooses to open the oven.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: This is Garfield's reaction in the intro of the second game when he finds himself back in the haunted house.
- Orwellian Retcon: Since 2015, in the second game, all copyrighted images of Perfection Pastries have been removed so that almost everything you collect in the game simply doesn't have any pictures of pastry and just the words or names on itnote , or if there are pictures of pastry on the boxes, then there's no Garfield or Odie or Perfection Pastries logo on it. The "Assorted Donuts" shell game is an exception because you can see the Garfield, Odie and Perfection Pastries images on the donuts box when you click the correct cup but not when there's a close-up on the box right before the game begins.
- Product Placement: The games promotes Perfection Pastries, a bakery that used Garfield for promotional purposes. Perfection Pastries put Garfield and Odie smiling and happy on their boxes.
- Reverse Psychology: Jon telling the player (Garfield) to stop giving cheese to mice.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: In the first game, if you (Garfield) don't give cheese to the mouse guarding the donuts, he'll turn into a giant bloodcurdling mouse.
- Sanity Meter: Garfield has a "Scare-o-Meter" that increases whenever he gets scared by one of the monsters or other creepy sights in the mansion. When it reaches its maximum, he panics and runs out of the mansion, ending the game.
- Screamer Prank: In the second game, clicking on one painting in the hall will zoom in on it and tell you to examine it closely. After a while, it will startle the player.
- Shell Game: In the second game, there are some donuts on a serving platter under a lid. Before you can get it, you have to win a mini-game where the platter is swapped around with two others and you have to keep track of where it is.
- Shout-Out: In the second game, there's a nod to Creature from the Black Lagoon. However, you might not want to click on it cause it'll make your Scare-o-meter go up.
- Significant Reference Date: The safe in the first game is opened with the code 6-19-78. June 19, 1978 was the date when Garfield started being published nationwide.
- Wham Shot:
- Lyman is alive, chained up in the basement and starving. Garfield is very surprised to see him, since he didn't appear in the comics for decades.
- In game two, Garfield finds Lyman's head in the oven.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: In the first game, Lyman suddenly vanishes once you (Garfield) are informed by him you should check the fireplace and then you exit his cell.
