Annoyotron

Annoyotron is a text adventure that proudly announces itself the most annoying game of all time. While I'm sure a few developers would take serious issue with that statement, I don't see them really winning an argument on the subject.

Annoyotron breaks new ground as it is one of a virtual handful of games that do not seek, ultimately, to be entertainment. The effect that most games wish to bring forth from their audience is one of "player fun." It is almost law. A game designed to stimulate its player in a different way is rare, yes -- but still, most of those games attempt to incorporate a good time within their processes.

Annoyotron offers no such escapes, no such virtue. It is fundamentally impossible to have a good time playing Annoyotron. Unless one is somehow able to force another soul into experiencing it with the promise that a hilarious endgame awaits. Even then, a perverse pleasure in wasting another human being's time is really more responsible for the following glee than the Annoyomatic.

Few games have balls brass enough to challenge our perceptions on what computer games can be. Annoyotron chooses a different path, snickering at all other modern entertainment software with a smarmy, crooked grin. Like a prank you are not in on, you will not appreciate this masterpiece until it has made you its dirty diaper. It serves to give us pause and consider the trappings we fall in within this genre and allow us to speak definitively of what software designed to entertain should not be.