Review for All You Can Eat
As a kid, I had a fantasy of being locked overnight inside a supermarket. Alone with no adults to stop me, there would be an almost endless amount of food and brightly wrapped, delicious candies to enjoy. The nameless protagonist of Gamechuck’s All You Can Eat is a man who made a somewhat similar fantasy come true. For the past ten years he has been living in a diner, never leaving once. The reason is that he bought an "all you can eat" coupon way back then, and it is valid for an unlimited time, just so long as he does not exit the diner. Things were going pretty well for years, but then came the dreadful day when the diner announces its imminent foreclosure. In the very short, somewhat funny and good-natured game that follows, the man is determined to do whatever he can in order to keep his favorite diner open, even if he has to finally go outside to achieve it.
All You Can Eat is defined by the developer as an "interactive comic," and that is certainly an accurate description. It is presented in the style of a black-and-white comic book, with separate story panels and cartoony ink sketches; even the light-gray background has the look and texture of paper. Every choice you make as the player scrolls the current panel to the left and creates a new one, even if it’s the same scene with only an added bit of dialogue or small change. You can’t manually scroll left or right, but you can scroll up to some previous panels, which helps serve as a recap of your progress made so far. This is done by using the "up" arrow on the keyboard, which for some reason isn’t indicated on the single-page “how to play” instruction screen.
The interface is simple point-and-click: labels appear when hovering over hotspots, and pressing the right mouse button examines a person or an object, while pressing the left button interacts with it if possible. At some points during the game, you are prompted to click the left button by an animated button onscreen simply to advance partial panels forward. Inventory is displayed below the main panel in the center of the screen (with fragments of other inaccessible panels on all four sides). Acquired objects can be used by dragging them to the desired hotspot in the environment.
The game itself is simple and straightforward. Including the diner there are only five locations, the others being an office building, a police station, an apartment block and the port docks. You can move freely between the locations, though the story requires events to play out in a certain order. There is no map, but since the locations are spread across a very small area, this feature is not really necessary. Navigation within the locations themselves is largely restricted to what is required to advance the story. Conversations with other characters (such as a police officer, a chef and a hobo) are also fairly limited, offering just a few choices to select from dialogue trees. The selected texts appear above the characters speaking, like in a comic book. There are no voices, but a careful reading of the conversations will reveal hints hidden in most of them.
In fact, audio in All You Can Eat is scarce overall. There is no music, only certain action-based sound effects – mostly doors opening and closing – and some environmental ambience such as heavy traffic, a busy office or a crowd of diners. There is a sharp contrast between the background audio and the fact that there are absolutely no people in each location, beside those relevant to the game. There are no cars or passersby in the street, nor are there any other patrons or staff members in the diner. Even so, the overall experience is quieter than usual, but the sound design does just enough to set the atmosphere in each location.
The static hand-drawn graphics are very nice. They appear to be a true labor of love, delivering simplicity, warmth and even some indie innocence (in the best sense of the word). There is no animation within the panels themselves, which some gamers might miss as it could have brought the characters and locations to life, thus making them more dynamic, but then that would break the conceit of being an interactive comic book.
The plot of All You Can Eat deals with the protagonist's effort to find out the reason for the closing of the diner and ultimately prevent it if he can. His investigation uncovers a combination of ruthless commercial interests and political corruption involving the city's highest ranking officials. Only after exposing the people involved, and making sure they will be dealt with by the authorities, can he rest assured that the diner will be kept open. It sounds earnest, but it never takes itself too seriously and the comic presentation gives the whole thing a relaxed, whimsical feel that’s fun to experience.
All the puzzles here are basically of the "fetch an object and use it" kind. Specific tasks include finding a way to jam a TV antenna, keeping a businessman away from his personal diary, and eavesdropping on a secret meeting. There are no intricate locks to open, wordy journals to leaf through or complex mazes to crack. The puzzles are quite easy to understand and solve, since they stem from the story itself. None feel like puzzles just for their own sake
What the game lacks is some background information about the main character. The fact that the diner and even the city itself are nameless gives the game a universal appeal; the story could take place in any restaurant in any city around the world. Still, you’ll probably want to learn more about this young man. Who is he? How did he manage to live in the diner for so many years? Does he have a family? What did he do before buying the coupon? Why did he give up his former life? The answers to these questions are absolutely not essential to the gameplay itself, yet they would have fleshed out the main protagonist better and made him more relatable.
With such streamlined interactions and little world-building, this is a very short game that can be completed within an hour or two. But after finishing there is one last cool and unique feature that lets you turn the separate panels of your playable experience into a printable comic book, complete with a specially designed front cover. Within one or two clicks, the game creates a PDF document using all the panels you went through, which is then automatically sent to your computer's desktop to be printed.
Unlike its title, All You Can Eat ends up being more like an appetizer than a full-course buffet, but while it lasts it’s quite fun. Its simplicity would make it a gentle introduction to players new to adventure gaming, while experienced genre fans can still enjoy it as a refreshing break between more serious and complex games. And though it has no replay value apart from a few achievements you might have missed, the comic book you can print at the end serves as a unique physical memento from your visit to this amusing virtual world.
