Tusker’s Number Adventure is an Adventure Puzzle game made by PHB Media Ltd, released on August 26th, 2019.
The game starts out with Tusker, an elephant with a love of counting, helping Mama Wolf bake a pie by gathering ingredients as they are counted out. Things soon take a dark turn when the game begins to glitch out and files become corrupted, with the implication that your personal data has been stolen. As you continue through the game and more malicious software becomes apparent, you will find out who is behind this malware within a children’s game and what they are trying to accomplish.
Gameplay starts out as more of an exploration adventure game, then later includes more puzzles and horror elements as the game progresses.
Available on Steam
and the Apple App store
It is recommended that you play the game first, as there are major spoilers below. You've been warned.
This game provides examples of the following tropes:
- Addressing the Player: The game will directly inform you that your personal files have been stolen, and the chat room sections will have in-game characters speak directly to you.
- Alliterative Name: The names of the villagers: Milly Monkey, Georgie Giraffe, Larry Lion, and Frankie Flamingo.
- Art Shift: "Tusker 1984" has graphics and music similar to that of the ZX Spectrum as opposed to the more Flash-based art style the rest of the game has.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Malicious software meant for recruiting people to an unknown organization in the guise of a children’s learning game.
- Blatant Lies: The game is very insistent that it isn’t malware right off the bat. And that it has no replay value.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: After stealing your data and having you go through several tests, Mama Wolf recruits you to their organization, telling you that you will be contacted in the real world at a random point to do their bidding.
- But Thou Must!: The chat room sections of the game allow you to type in whatever you want in response to what the other characters say, but the conversations will go the same way, every time.
- Exact Time to Failure: When the game encrypts your files, you are given exactly 30 minutes and 30 seconds to recover them with a keycode, and each wrong answer will take a large chunk of time from it. Of course, since you don’t know the code and there is no right code, all you can do is speed the timer up.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: As a new recruit, you’ll be contacted by Mama Wolf at any point, and you’ll either do what they tell you or be forced to.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Mama Wolf has these during the ending scene. Could also extend to their wall of eyes.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Tusker and most of the animal villagers wear only pants (or an apron, in Mama Wolf’s case). The only exceptions to this are Georgie Giraffe and Frankie Flamingo.
- Never Trust a Title: Tusker’s Number Adventure sounds like your typical preschool learning game and not at all like malware. The Steam title undoes this, as it adds [Malware Detected] after it, which makes the game that much more obvious.
- Ominous Multiple Screens: During the ending of the game, Mama Wolf will illustrate their reach with an array of monitors that feature single eyes surrounded by static.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: Whenever the game gets corrupted, which is often.
- Programming Game: Sort of. When the game files become corrupted, fixing them involves dragging the “patch files” onto the corrupted ones in a certain order to fix them.
- Repetitive Audio Glitch: Once the game reboots after being corrupted, the voices of the counting children glitch out like this."O-o-o-n-n-n-e-e-e! T-w-w-o-o-o! T-h-r-e-e-e-e!"
- Title Confusion: The Steam version is titled Tusker’s Number Adventure [Malware Detected] despite the fact that the Apple version and every official mention of the game (including in the Steam game description) just uses Tusker’s Number Adventure.
- Rage Breaking Point: A third playthrough will not be tolerated by Mama Wolf."STOP WASTING MY TIME!"
- The Reveal: The ending of the game reveals the true nature of the game and who’s behind it: it’s a recruitment tool for Mama Wolf’s organization, and Mama Wolf’s “true form” is far more realistic than their chat room avatar.
- Sensory Abuse: The chorus of counting children at the beginning of the game are surprisingly loud, although that might be to simulate the illusion of a child audience. Meanwhile, the glitch sound effects are perhaps even louder, though it’s justified as they are used for jump scares and atmosphere in certain sections of the game.
- "Simon Says" Mini-Game: Patching the corrupted files in the Test Environment will require you to activate them in a certain order, which is revealed by switching the code view and waiting for the files to light up in sequence.
- Stock Femur Bone: During "Tusker 1984", Rex the Dog will block the way to the woods until you give him one of these.
- Wingding Eyes: At the end of the second playthrough, the wall of eyes are now crossed out with red Xs.
