Stranger Things is beloved for its shrewd ’80s pastiche and the sentimentality-laden references to its ’80s forebearsâE.T., Poltergeist, The Goonies and so on. It’s a spooky, immaculately made, feel-good adventure too, of course, but there’s no quantifying our love of that singular ’80s vibe. All that considered, it was only a matter of time before the smash TV show spawned a stylized ’80s video game.
Infamous Games, a group of people “who love old school adventure games,” took it upon themselves to build a non-authorized, playable fan tribute to the new Netflix series, as Kotaku reports. It isn’t a complete version, unfortunately, but rather a snapshot of one of the show’s scenes. It’s still plenty worth your time, though. You get to help Hopper and his deputies, Powell and Callahan, look for a clue to Will’s disappearance in the woods, the last place Will was known to be. Then you find the clue and the game is over.
Like its now antiquated predecessorsâKing’s Quest, or even Cavern of the Wizard, the game created for Bigâyou direct Hopper’s actions by selecting one of various bits of dialogue. The best part is the dry Hopper humor embedded in the text, and you can even make him smoke cigarettes! The game can be downloaded for free right here.
Buyers beware: when I opened the game and was hit by the Stranger Things theme song, an old crosshairs cursor, and a MS-DOS-like Terminal font prompting me to “click to continue,” I about fell off my chair in a staggering fit of nostalgia. Somebody fund a full version of this game!
Until that happens, take this demo for a spin and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Image: Netflix/Infamous QuestsÂ