A special news bulletin flashes across your TV screen while you're pretending to do homework. The reporter on screen is in a panic, and explains that the world's machinery has gone haywire, with floods in deserts, blizzards in tropical jungles, and cows drifting into the sky like untethered balloons. The world is broken. Naturally, it becomes your job to fix it.
This is an old first person Adventure Game that came out in 1997 for PC. As the player character, you talk with a pretty large and strange cast of characters by picking your questions and responses from a list. All the lines are fully voice acted, including the ones you choose. The graphics are a mix of painted backgrounds, computer generated creatures, and a couple human actors being filmed in front of a lot of dials and knobs.
The game takes you on a journey into the earth, which is full of literal busted machinery and an understaffed maintenance crew. The mechanics, Bud and Julius, explain there's a blockage in a set of valves in the earth's core, and that's what's causing all of the terrifying weather on the surface. The mechanics are too busy preforming damage control to remove the block, so it's up to you to get those valves clear. This task proves to be a lot more difficult than anticipated when you slide down the earth's magnetic pole (which is a candy-striped pole) and find out the energy valves are occupied by four weird, stubborn creatures.
Deep in the earth's core, a city of half-animal, half-mechanical "Mechanimals" is gumming up the works, and the creatures there have no idea there's a world of aliens up above. Exploring the city and talking with the Mechanimals is vital to progressing through the game, and the makers of the game certainly put a lot of work into building this goofy world and populating it with equally goofy characters. The Mechanimals seem to think that the energy valves are spiritually significant, and that you are the prophesied Grand Mechanic, here to fix those problems in their lives that brought them to this highly spiritual site which is totally not just a maintenance area what are you talking about. The main four Mechanimals who are blocking the energy valves will not move, not even to save your world, unless you help them first. They are:
- Carbine, a giant lizard with a camera for a head, is the lead reporter for the New Torque Times. His camera lens broke, and he needs a new one to keep his job.
- Phlange, a creature resembling a T-Rex fused with a tuba, is a historian and an aspiring musician. She feels uninspired and needs something to get those creative juices flowing.
- Diode, a bird in a brass sphere, is obsessed with finding a way to the surface world, and is the only character who recognizes right off the bat that you're a human.
- The Derelict, a chill dude with chicken legs and a halo of wire hair, mostly just mumbles "Really? Wow," when you ask him questions. If you want to find out his deal or even his name, you're better off finding it from other characters.
You talk to plenty of other fun characters with fleshed out personalities and backstories, but those are the main ones to satisfy. If you help all four, you can save the world.
This game provides examples of:
- Ambiguous Gender: The player character is never revealed what gender they are, and the character sounds like a girl or at least a child. Though it's likely meant to be like that for the person playing the game so the character can be anyone to play.
- Ambiguous Robots: The Mechanimals are all part organic and part mechanical, however, the extent to how mechanical they are seems to vary greatly. Some Mechanimals, like Carbine and Phlange appear to have some clearly organic body parts. Others, like Diode and The Derelict appear to be more machine than animal.
- Artificial Limbs: Lugnut inverted this trope. He had mechanical legs and replaced them with organic wooden ones.
- All of the Mechanimals are at least partially mechanical, usually with the artificial limbs outnumbering the organic ones.
- Bag of Holding: The Emergency Kit Julius and Bud give you at the start.
- Beeping Computer: The world's control room emits a constant series of modem-like tones.
- Big Bad: Diode is effectively this. He plots to rule the surface world. He's the one who broke Carbine's lens, which is why Carbine came to the "Oracle", it's hinted he's responsible for Ohm's condition, and he almost certainly stood on his own valve on purpose to force the World Works to send someone down.
- Big Electric Switch: The On/Off switch for the World, appropriately. Bud even puts on gloves before he flips it.
- Brain Uploading: Sprocket created a machine that could create "living glass" by copying a Mechanimal's mind into it. Made easier by the fact that Mechanimals have circuit boards for brains. Sprocket's apprentice, Ohm had tested this device, but it transferred his mind into it, leaving Ohm himself as the Derelict.
- But Thou Must!: Right off the bat, you have the option of going forward (blocked by a fence) left (spontaneous earthquake causes impassable fault line) right (pile of cows drops out of sky to block path) or you can go down the path marked "KEEP OUT."
- Cave Behind the Falls: Ozzie's hideout behind the greenhouse caverns
- Chain of Deals: Just finding a new lens for Carbine leads into a huge list of deals you have to perform for the Mechanimals.
- City in a Bottle: Because of some unfortunate architectural choices, Ozzie was able to seal off the entire earth's core by changing the pass code on the impassable Border Door. 65 million years later, the core is now populated by Mechanimals who have never seen or heard of a human, and who think Diode is crazy for trying to bust through the Border when there's clearly nothing beyond it.
- Cool Mask: Manny can loan you a Mechanimal head, which you can use to gain access to the Hall of Records. Before wearing it, you are able to customize it with several different options.
- Covers Always Lie: The background of the box cover shows the New Torque City proper, which you can look at through a gate, but never actually explore.
- Cyborg: All of the Mechanimals are part animal and part machine. In fact, some of them express disgust at the fact that you have no metal on your body.
- Developer's Foresight: If you look through Julius and Bud's quarters before meeting the pair themselves, Julius immediately prepares for the Great Tune-Up.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: Diode has this thanks to his exposure to magnetism.
- Expospeak Gag: Clicking on the bonsai tree behind Lugnut causes him to tell you "Hey hey hey, don't touch that free standing fibrous organism!" "Why can't I touch your tree?"
- Fat and Skinny: Julius is lean and keeps his bunk tidy and organized, while Bud comes off as a slob with a messy workspace - to the point that the Great Tune-up is last on his to-do list.
- Feathered Fiend: Diode is a bird-like Mechanimal, and the game's Big Bad.
- Faux Affably Evil: When first meeting Diode, he appears to be friendly and is thrilled that you are human, eagerly asking you how you managed to get down to the Mechanimal's world. Refuse to give him what he wants and he will immediately drop the act, yelling and insulting you.
- G-Rated Stoner: Ohm acts like this when you first met him, as he's very laid back and calm, but also very forgetful. This is because of an error that happened when he tried out Sprocket's experiment that got his mind lost. Meaning that the Ohm at the Oracle is just a shell.
- Game-Breaking Bug: The game glitches make it difficult to complete the game unless you complete it in a certain order.
- Great Big Library of Everything: The Hall of Records, with a Mechanimal computer holding profiles on every Mechanimal in the game, even itself. Though not all records are open to the public.
- Humans Are Ugly: The Mechanimals consider you ugly by their standards, due to your lack of metal. Diode even calls you a "meatbag".
- Infallible Babble: The Derelict's rambling isn't as random as it seems.
- Irony: Despite having rummaged through Ozzie's little apartment, Diode either never found or never realized the significance of the note with the Border Door's password, which would have saved him a lot of trouble.
- It's Up to You: Your character is the only one who can fix the world, since Julius and Bud have to keep the place steady in their control room. They do serve as a reliable Mission Control, at least.
- Kid Hero: When your character hears the world broke, it's while doing homework.
- Mad Scientist: Diode's lair is full of his inventions, designed to breach the magnetic Border. He got the funding for them by telling everyone he was researching a cure for magnetism. Maybe he should've actually worked on the cure, he seems to have developed a touch of magnetism madness.
- No OSHA Compliance: The elevator opens up onto a crumbling catwalk with no railing and a bottomless drop on either side.
- Obligatory Swearing: The game is aimed to 9 year olds, though the only swears are "damn" when Osgood Sr was blaming himself for being stubborn in a video blog and "hell" through Diode's recordings (though Diode is explaining that walking through water is like the place "hell" rather than a swear.
- Ominous Multiple Screens: The four CCTV screens monitoring the surface in the world's control room. They get worse after Julius and Bud perform the Great Tune-Up.
- Ragnarök Proofing: The World Works workers basically set the world on autopilot for 65 million years, and yet all of the elevators, video phones and equipment still work.
- Repetitive Audio Glitch: Diode has a Verbal Tic that causes him to occasionally have trouble speaking properly, which he openly admits is due to his exposure to magnetism. None of the other Mechanimals have this problem.
- Reverse the Polarity: Making the anti-magnetic medallion work on Diode is done by switching the glass and metallic parts with each other. It's also possible, with Cathode's help, to use the metal Carborium-X to stop Diode from getting to the surface.
- Riddle for the Ages: It's never stated why Phlange is in the Oracle as the others are there because of Diode (Carbine because Diode destroyed his lens as he was going there anyway, and Ohm is somewhat hinted because of Diode).
- Saving the World: Your goal is to help save the world by getting the energy valves back on.
- Scenery Porn: Wow there are a lot of beautiful backgrounds!
- Shout-Out: One of the exhibits in the sculpture garden is apparently The Monolith.
- Seen It All: The old and venerable Sprocket doesn't bat an eye when you walk in, just laughs and says, "Hello, alien!"
- Stupidity Is the Only Option: In order to get Diode off the energy valve, you have to hand over the anti-magnetic medallion... which at that time is your only method of returning home safely... to the guy who wants to rule the surface world. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Of course there's another way out, but your character can only find it using an item Diode drops after he vacates the valve.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: How in the world do they expect a Keep Out sign to keep anyone out of World Works? This is the machine that runs the world, shouldn't they at least have a locked door somewhere so a kid doesn't wander in and start pushing buttons?
- They Don't Build Them Like They Used To: Manifold, the body shop owner, says this while reminiscing about his old buddies at the Ironworks.
- Underground City: New Torque City, which is the home of the Mechanimals.
- Video Phone: Julius and Bud have one in their control room, and you have to use another, less maintained one to reach them while in the Earth's core.
- Wall Around the World: The Border acts as this. Until Bud and Julius put together a device to let you slide down the magnetic pole, the earth's core is completely sealed off in a magnetic sphere. No one can get in or out because the Border Door is locked and the pass code missing, and it's been millions of years since there's been any contact between the surface and the core.
- World of Funny Animals: The Earth's core is inhabited by Funny Animal cyborgs.
- World of Pun: The Mechanimals live in New Torque City. Manny runs a body shop where he offers to sell you a new body. The North and South Poles are marked by actual poles. On the ingot assembly line, confusing one Mechanimal causes it to mix up the ingredients, and insulting another gets the ingredients steamed. Puns galore.
