PC
SMALL RADIOS BIG TELEVISIONS
Point and click weirdness
Small Radios Big Televisions is a Point and Click Adventure game by Fire Face Corporation and published by Adult Swim Games. Adult Swim seems to enjoy curating games with odd concepts almost as much as tinyBuild. So I figured I was in for an interesting game regardless of any other qualities.
Small Radios Big Televisions is centered around an abandoned, seemingly post-apocalyptic world. You never get more than a minuscule amount of insight into the viewpoint character, and only a little more about the world. You move about the abandoned factories, looking for tapes that contain programs for your character’s VR headset.
Each one contains a small area of nature (mostly), frequently containing a gem. You need those gems since they open doors, and sometimes they’re cleverly hidden. Also, you frequently need to corrupt your tapes with magnets to reveal extra gems, which changes them. The tapes are implied to have been designed to keep remaining people sane, but there are hingts of something else. Overall, they prefer to leave you in the dark about much of the background, which creates a bit of suspense. If anything, it enhances the creepiness of the game world.
Almost all of the non-tape puzzles revolve around interacting with some part of the environment. There are a few elements which simply require you to poke around the rooms to find something secreted away. But for the most part, you need only interact with simple environment objects themselves. Very few require the inventory management historically typical to the genre.
Those that do, however, rarely require you to carry anything around for an extended period of time. In truth, the most common items in your inventory will be gems, especially since it’s possible to get more of them than you need. Speaking of, a nice feature I found was that it’s impossible to use a gem on a door which will leave you in an unwinnable state. It’s a small thing, sure, but it speaks to the level of quality to which the game was held.
"Small Radios Big Televisions is a short, very well made game and worth the investment if you can justify it"
// Publisher: Adult Swim Games // Developer: Fire Face Corporation // 227
OS: Windows XP and up
Processor: 1 Ghz and up
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: Built in toaster
Storage: 300 MB available space
Additional Notes: Please don't use your video card to make toast. Runs fine on integrated graphics cards.