Under the Warehouse

Under the Warehouse starts with a ringing telephone underneath a single spotlight in a very dark room. It’s a bit of imagery that comes straight out of a David Lynch film, setting expectations high that this is going to be a puzzling and often surreal journey through somebody’s unresolved nightmares. It primed me for characters who spout nonsensical dialog, puzzles with baffling solutions and a sort of dream-logic that is normally reserved for Lynch’s movies. And while it’s nowhere near as good as Mulholland Drive, Under the Warehouse surprised me by mostly living up to the early promise and giving me an adventure unlike anything else you’ll see this year. This is my review of Under the Warehouse by first-time developer GoolWorks.

Under the Warehouse is one of those games that just wants you to go with it. No matter how weird the request is or the crazy lengths you need to go to get it done, it’s better to not ask too many questions and just let the surreal story and setting wash over you. I bring this up because most of this game hinges on our nameless hero tracking down an egg. But it can’t just be any old egg, because it needs to be both big and colorful. After all, that’s what the kid in the mask told you in the back alley right before pushing you into the titular warehouse. Like I said, it’s better if you just go with it.

The truth is, it almost doesn’t matter what the set-up is, because it’s really just there to send you in a bunch of different directions in hopes of solving a series of puzzles. Although it looks like a low-polygon first-person adventure game, Under the Warehouse reminded me more of a very simple version of Shadowgate. This largely plays by point and click adventure rules, where we’ll pick up items that you’ll need to use and combine with other items in order to solve different parts of the puzzle. Some items will be used almost immediately, while others will stay in your inventory until the very end. You’ll pick up an item in order to have access to another item that will be used to open up a door that will give you yet another items. Forget David Lynch, this puzzle loop is almost Kaftaesque.

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What I like about this game is that a lot of these puzzles actually make some sort of sense. Most of the time, when I picked up an important new item, I knew exactly what I needed to do with it. The various characters give good hints and the warehouse isn’t big enough to make things feel overwhelming. For example, when I got the bag of seeds, I knew that I needed to take it to the chicken. Why is there a random chicken in the middle of the warehouse? I don’t know. Probably for the same reason there’s an ice fishing hole in the basement, a filing cabinet that is always on fire, a guard dog standing in the way of a bunch of statues and a mad scientist who has seemingly invented a teleportation machine. This is a game that uses a heavy dose of dream-logic, which means that it’s better if you just go with it.

The problem I ran into is that you can only justify so many things with dream-logic. There are some puzzles that simply don’t make sense, no matter how you look at it. For instance, it makes sense that you need to turn on this automatic crushing machine by inserting a large battery into the port. You don’t need any hints to figure out that puzzle. However, the game wants you to place an egg in the crushing machine. Why? Because what’s inside the egg is an old key that will open up a bunch of doors. That’s cool and all, but why was the key inside the egg? And why did we need a crushing machine to open the egg? It’s an egg, you could have cracked it open on literally any surface. That’s not dream-logic, that’s just a dumb puzzle solution.

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Part of the problem with this kind of narrative is that it’s hard to connect with a story that might not even be happening. We don’t know anything about the protagonist and I’m not convinced that any of the random moments have a deeper meaning. Even the ending seems to mock you for wasting your time solving all these puzzles. I could see a lot of people finishing this game and feeling like they were cheated.

I am not one of those people. While it’s certainly true that trying to get a grasp of this game’s story is a lot like trying to grab water, I still enjoyed the weird and random journey it took me on. I liked solving the puzzles and exploring every part of the warehouse. Of course, it helps that this game is incredibly short. It will take most players no more than ninety-minutes, with experienced adventure game players finishing the story in under an hour. That makes up for a lot of the game’s roughness (including the lack of camera options), and I ultimately ended the game feeling satisfied with the nightmarish roller coaster ride Under the Warehouse put me on. It’s a solid first attempt from developer GoolWorks.