Baobab's Mausoleum

Ep. 1: Ovnifagos Don’t Eat Flamingos

Baobabs Mausoleum is a planned three-episode surreal point-and-click/RPG-adventure by Celery Emblem that’s built with Unity. It’s about an eggplant FBI agent named Watracio Walpurgis whose car is stranded in the creepy town of Flamingo Creek (population 64). BM is about as gonzo as you get, all the way down to the 90’s VHS screen filter on the options screen. It’s probably best described as a cross between Twin Peaks and OFF. It takes about an hour and a half to complete.

While the game is aggressively weird, the weirdness is purposeful and aesthetically interesting and gives the sense of an overarching strategy rather than weirdness for weirdness sake. The game is filled with a variety of minigames, some of which are tedious or pointless. There is a rowboat mini game that requires the player press the correct direction to row (a poor man’s QTE, essentially) and a game-in-the-game where the player must collect VHS tapes while avoiding dinosaur cops. There are also a couple of tedious bits involving 3D platforming with dodgy play control and slow, somewhat ill-timed moving platforms. The game’s flaws detract from the enjoyment but don’t manage to kill the game. This is the magic of gonzo: it just works, bugs, design flaws, and all.

The game is mostly top-down perspective but in Act 4 it briefly switches to first-person perspective, which is awesome, and the player is treated to the aforementioned 3D platforming and a rather fun rude beaver hunt.

At times, however, BM is a bit too eccentric for its own good. At one point the player is told to input a piracy-prevention code to enter a theater. The player is given no hint as to where to find this code. It turns out it was originally listed on celeryemblem.com, which no longer exists even though the series is still inactive development. The code can now be found on the publisher’s site, removing it yet another step from the game environment. Forcing the player to leave the game to progress the main plotline is not a good idea, as this provides players a natural stopping point from which they may never return (see Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP). There are other issues. The cheevs may or may not be bugged. The controller support is goosey at certain points, so I had to switch to keyboard occasionally.

Overall, it’s an interesting game, and well worth playing for those who are into gonzo-style indies (OFF, Space Funeral) or just want to play a different sort of adventure game that relies on traditional game mechanics rather than being wholly experimental.

Celery Emblem just announced a Switch port, so here’s hoping they’ll ironed out the bugs. PC players can already play Episode 2: 1313 Barnabas Dead End Drive, which is twice as long and allows players to explore the town of Flamingo Creek.