Beckett
The Secret Experiment · 2018 · Adventure, Indie, Nudity, Gore, Point & Click
PC
Very Positive82% · 95 📉 Recent reviews down 69%
Compare prices in Official Stores
Compare prices in Keyshops
Keyshops are third-party marketplaces — keys are resold and can be region-locked or a different edition. Check the listing's region & edition before buying.
Some store links are affiliate links — playze may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes the price you pay, and the cheapest option is always shown in the Best price box above.
Screenshots
About Beckett
WHAT IS IT?
Dark, disturbing, unsettling - Beckett is a powerful narrative adventure game that gets under your skin and makes you question everything about yourself and the very nature of reality.
The game is a single-player, point-and-click style experience that lasts around 3 hours. But it will be in your head for a long time after.
WHY WE MADE IT
We made Beckett as a story that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of literature, theatre and independent world cinema. It won the Games category in the 2018 BAFTA Scotland awards, made various game-of-the-year lists (2018) and was made part of V&A Dundee's permanent gallery collection.
You could call it a psychological horror. You could call it an anti-love story. You could call it a surrealist nightmare. Beckett is a disturbing, unique experience that will make you question what it is to exist.
The game puts reality under the spotlight, drawing you into a missing person's case set in a dark and unforgiving world. Our main character, Beckett, morns the loss of his wife - she was everything to him, but time has passed and life has lost meaning. Then there's the City, which plays with Beckett like cat with a baby bird, making him act against his will. You must take control, explore, navigate, interact, talk, defy... we're all memories waiting to happen, we're all memories waiting to fade.
"A rare example of total and genuine auteurism in the games world" - Glixel, Rolling Stone
"convincingly uncompromised" - Alphr
"Beckett impresses at every turn." - Cubed3
"An innovative and engrossing experience." - Russell Lees, creator of The Dark Eye
"A powerful experience for those willing to dive into it." - Big Boss Battle.
"The decisions that the game-player makes cause the story to squirm under the influence of the choices they make." - 3AM Magazine
"Playing Beckett is wonderfully transcendent... It hones in on the disturbing and disgusting corners of society with little reprieve, making your stomach and your brain churn in tandem." - Rely On Horror
"Always intriguing and defies the tried-and-true structure we’ve come to expect from adventure games." - Game Bias
- An original multi-layered story, discovered and reconstructed by the player and their imagination
- A dynamic narrative that responds to the way you play the story and interact with its world
- A bizarre and compelling world, filled with hand-made objects and artefacts
- A unique soundtrack and soundscape composed and aligned to the story and the world it exists in
- A pick-up-and-play interface, no gamer-skills necessary - just an inquisitive mind
- Questions about what it is to exist, the fragile nature of reality and the dark-humour that underpins life
- Morgellon & Ekbom Live Here - a short, interactive play, featuring the voice of John Otway (if you don't know it, you should check out his hit Really Free and its B-Side, Beware of The Flowers).
- Spectacular abstract environments to be explored and discovered, digitally painted by Herman Serrano (Weird Dreams, Chaos Engine, StarGlider)
- Illustrations by the incredibly talented Sean Mulvenna, and original screenprints by the fantastic Al White
- Programming by Gordon Bell (MotorStorm, The Shoot, Need for Speed: The Run)
- Design, direction, words, music and 'made-things' by Simon Meek (Slabovia.tv & The 39 Steps)
- Access to the dark recesses of your own mind
Dark, disturbing, unsettling - Beckett is a powerful narrative adventure game that gets under your skin and makes you question everything about yourself and the very nature of reality.
The game is a single-player, point-and-click style experience that lasts around 3 hours. But it will be in your head for a long time after.
WHY WE MADE IT
We made Beckett as a story that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of literature, theatre and independent world cinema. It won the Games category in the 2018 BAFTA Scotland awards, made various game-of-the-year lists (2018) and was made part of V&A Dundee's permanent gallery collection.
You could call it a psychological horror. You could call it an anti-love story. You could call it a surrealist nightmare. Beckett is a disturbing, unique experience that will make you question what it is to exist.
The game puts reality under the spotlight, drawing you into a missing person's case set in a dark and unforgiving world. Our main character, Beckett, morns the loss of his wife - she was everything to him, but time has passed and life has lost meaning. Then there's the City, which plays with Beckett like cat with a baby bird, making him act against his will. You must take control, explore, navigate, interact, talk, defy... we're all memories waiting to happen, we're all memories waiting to fade.
PRAISE FOR BECKETT
"A rare example of total and genuine auteurism in the games world" - Glixel, Rolling Stone
"convincingly uncompromised" - Alphr
"Beckett impresses at every turn." - Cubed3
"An innovative and engrossing experience." - Russell Lees, creator of The Dark Eye
"A powerful experience for those willing to dive into it." - Big Boss Battle.
"The decisions that the game-player makes cause the story to squirm under the influence of the choices they make." - 3AM Magazine
"Playing Beckett is wonderfully transcendent... It hones in on the disturbing and disgusting corners of society with little reprieve, making your stomach and your brain churn in tandem." - Rely On Horror
"Always intriguing and defies the tried-and-true structure we’ve come to expect from adventure games." - Game Bias
Includes:
- An original multi-layered story, discovered and reconstructed by the player and their imagination
- A dynamic narrative that responds to the way you play the story and interact with its world
- A bizarre and compelling world, filled with hand-made objects and artefacts
- A unique soundtrack and soundscape composed and aligned to the story and the world it exists in
- A pick-up-and-play interface, no gamer-skills necessary - just an inquisitive mind
- Questions about what it is to exist, the fragile nature of reality and the dark-humour that underpins life
Featuring:
- Morgellon & Ekbom Live Here - a short, interactive play, featuring the voice of John Otway (if you don't know it, you should check out his hit Really Free and its B-Side, Beware of The Flowers).
- Spectacular abstract environments to be explored and discovered, digitally painted by Herman Serrano (Weird Dreams, Chaos Engine, StarGlider)
- Illustrations by the incredibly talented Sean Mulvenna, and original screenprints by the fantastic Al White
- Programming by Gordon Bell (MotorStorm, The Shoot, Need for Speed: The Run)
- Design, direction, words, music and 'made-things' by Simon Meek (Slabovia.tv & The 39 Steps)
- Access to the dark recesses of your own mind
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
Well, it is worth it just for the experience, I think. If you're looking for complex mechanics and puzzle solving or a satisfying detective mystery to solve - do not bother. This is a glorified slideshow or an equivalent of a walking sim in point and click form. It's really vibey, though. The storytelling is murky and grim, the atmoshepere is pungent and palpable. You will get no answers here. You will finish this more confused than you've started. If you like absurdism and dadaism as art movements - this is an experience for you. I'd struggle to call this a game, but a well-crafted interactive experience it is.2 found this helpful
Pretentious, dull, and whoever added the soundboard clearly hates ears.
Eraserhead: The Game
Beckett is interesting, to say the least. It's dark and obscures its meaning behind metaphor and cryptic symbolism. In some ways, it's very explicit in its messages, but the greater meaning requires more thought. Having seen both endings, many things were recontextualized for me, and I'm not sure if I understand it entirely myself. But, I suppose, some art is intended to be left to interpretation. The themes presented throughout the bulk of the story are certainly enough to chew on, even if you get nothing from its conclusion. If you have experienced or been adjacent to darker thoughts that come with existentialism or depression, you will likely be able to identify with much of what Beckett has to offer, including Beckett himself. At first the gameplay seemed unappealing, but after the first couple chapters, I really started to understand why they took this approach over a more traditional interactive book style game, like they had done previously. All this may seem vague, but I am trying not to give too much away. I wouldn't want to shape your perception of the game, as I feel it is best experienced first hand with your personal lens of interpretation. In other words, I high…
At the moment, not simultaneously but proximate, I am reading Naked Lunch and playing this game. Perhaps the book is recontextualising the game (Buroughs, hmm) but the literary experiment here is something that I absolutely recommend. It is an older game and I have played it before but some reviews are so wide of the mark that I felt I had to say that well at least I like it, liked it, and probably will the next time I play. Or rather experience and I think that is what upsets some people here.
This game is not for everyone, you need to be at least interested in absurdism (like Beckett's work) or have some notion of Kafkaesque narratives. Besides that, you can find a pretty interesting work, with an engaging story and gorgeus art design. It can get a little too weird and just a bit too long (even being a really short game), but I'll say is enjoyable to me.
Community reviews
—
0 reviews
Sign in to write a review.
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this game.
