## Description

Old Man Bill, a well-adjusted mad scientist in the Dr. Brain vein, has
disappeared from his home in the surreal dreamland of Desert Bridge (just take
a left at Oneiropolis), and his household’s steward, Harold the Talking
Picture Frame (Bill’s first creation), means to find him in order to restore
meaning to the lives of its denizens. Harold recruits Bill’s old friend game
designer Jonas Kyratzes to rig up a software interface permitting its
inhabitants to seek some external assistance from the real world in locating
Bill. This assistant is the player.

Using a point-and-click first-person interface (and a hearty helping of
whimsical humour) to navigate the charmingly crayon-and-marker-illustrated
grounds of the house, the player will explore, investigate and interact with
curious characters such as Stripes the dinosaur, Zathras the turtle, Emperor
Squiggles the Magnificent (a cat) and a whole host of sentient mushrooms, as
well as achieving a deeper understanding of an endless series of fanciful
machines (running on gerbil-generated electricity… can you get the dynamos
turning again!) and polite robot doors running the Butlerware GUI. Through
these exchanges (and inventory management including the verbs “smell”, “shake”
and “gerbelize”) the player will accrue passwords, ciphers, recipes and
instructions for traversing barriers and operating peculiar apparati
permitting passage to rarified portions of the estate kept under lock and key,
and uncover just what has happened to kindly Old Man Bill anyway…

Could it possibly have anything to do with those shadowy armies of Urizen
massing in the distance?

The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge