Can you secure your son's future and help him grow up to be a man who fights for justice?
”69 was a strange year... the year Uncle Sam got his ass kicked... the young told the old, ‘fuck off’... the year when people looked at the Earth from a new perspective. The year I found out what it means to be a grown-up. I was eight then. My mom worked during the day and studied at night. She was determined to give us a better future. I learned how to take care of myself, cause I didn't want to be a burden to her. We didn't know much about each other then. She didn't say much, and I didn't ask. But it all changed that summer of 69."
— Adult Mitch (Maurice Whitfield), during the opening narration
Best Month Ever! is a 2022 point-and-click adventure release developed by the Warsaw Film School's video game directing program, and is the first such project produced by the program. It is available for Microsoft Windows via Steam, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, with forthcoming releases for the Playstation 4 and Playstation 5.
The story is told by a young Black man named Mitch, and is a flashback to his childhood in the United States in 1969, when he was eight years old. Mitch lived with his struggling white single mother, Louise. One day, Louise decides to pack up the family's meager possessions into their aging Cadillac and set out on a cross country journey, promising Mitch that it will be the "Best Month Ever!" The reason for this sudden change is tragic: Louise is terminally ill and has less than a month left to live, so she wants to find a safe home for Mitch to live in after she dies. Mitch and his mother bond over the ensuing few weeks against the social, economic, and racial turmoil of late 1960's America.
Even though the game is framed as a flashback to Mitch's childhood, the decisions Mitch and Louise make during the narrative shape Mitch's narration and ultimately the man he grows up to be, with 9 possible endings.
This video game provides examples of:
- The '60s: The story is primarily set in 1969, with occasional flashbacks to 1961 around the time Louise became pregnant with Mitch. The opening narration discusses America's escalation into Vietnam and the peace movement.
- Action Mom: Do NOT mess with Louise, and especially do not threaten Mitch in any way. Louise will make sure you regret it. Also, Kathy goes absolutely berserk when her son reveals that Father Judah molested him. She shoots and kills him.
- It's the Best Whatever, Ever!: Both the title of the game, and Louise's promise to Mitch. Based on his ability to bond more closely with his mother than ever before, he feels she lived up to that promise, regardless of what happens in his life afterwards.
- Bittersweet Ending: Mitch is ultimately adopted by his father's family after Louise dies, despite initially being rejected by his paternal grandfather, Lester, but in addition to his mother's death, just how bittersweet this ending is depends on the choices you made for him and Louise during the story.
- Golden Ending: Instilling in Mitch a set of strong principles, ways of dealing with people, and respect for the law will get him endings as a jazz musician like his father Frank, doctor, Congressman, wealthy stockbroker, champion middleweight boxer, or a humanitarian aid worker.
- Bad Ending: On the other hand, depending on your choices, Mitch can end up as a getaway driver or a gang member just paroled from prison at the time of the game's ending. He can also have an ending where he is an Army sniper, which causes his family to disown him in horror, though he is proud of his career.
- In all nine endings, Mitch has a son, and your choices determine his relationship with his son, regardless of what career Mitch ends up choosing.
- Call It Karma: Louise and Mitch arrive in a Texas town which has been devastated by a tornado. The only house standing belongs to an old Black woman whose son was kidnapped by the KKK. She tells Louise that the tornado is God's punishment to the town for what happened to her son.
- Camp Gay: Kiki, the cabaret owner, is very stereotypically flamboyant.
- Cheerful Child: Despite the many unsettling things he witnesses during their journey, Mitch generally remains optimistic.
- Child of Forbidden Love: Mitch is the product of an interracial romance in the early 1960s, when there were still strong taboos against interracial relationships. Neither his mother's family nor his father's family are accepting of the situation, but his father does end up taking him in with his wife and his half-siblings after Louise dies.
- Cool Old Lady: Barbara, the tough but kindly owner of a Louisiana alligator farm, who takes Louise and Mitch in, although counseling Louise on her duties to be honest with Mitch in the process. Mitch even states that if he had to choose a grandmother, he would choose Barbara. She turns out to be the second wife of Louise's father, Leon, and states she will take Mitch in if Louise cannot locate his father.
- Creepy Child: Ada, Ida, and Oda, three girls being raised by their father and grandmother. It turns out that their father, Thomas, kidnapped their mothers, and they were all conceived through rape and live in constant fear of the anger of their father and grandmother.
- Creepy Uncle: Invoked with Father Judah, who asks the children to call him "Uncle Judd" when they are alone with him.
- Crossing the Desert: One of the scenes takes place in a desert with saguaro cacti everywhere, where the car overheats, stranding them, with Mitch getting bitten by a rattlesnake. They are rescued by a Native American man, Timmy.
- Deep South: Provides much of the narrative backdrop of the game. Even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed five years before the game is set, lingering prejudices still abound.
- Disappeared Dad: A central theme in this game, as Louise has been estranged from her father, Leon, for years, while Mitch never met his father, Frank. Butch's father was killed in Vietnam. Louise hopes that either her father or Mitch's father will agree to raise him after she dies, and their trip is a search for either or both of them. When Louise locates her father's second wife, Barbara, who owns an alligator farm in Louisiana, she finds out that her estrangement from her father happened because he had gone to prison for attempting to kill Father Judah for molesting her. Barbara implies that Leon died in a flood.
- Evil Matriarch: Louise and Kathy's mother, Margaret, is cold, emotionally abusive, manipulative, controlling, racist, and refuses to believe Louise when Louise tells her that Father Judah has been molesting her. She accuses Louise of causing her father to leave the family because of her accusations of sexual abuse by the priest.
- Fishing Episode: After leaving Louise's childhood home, she and Mitch spend the night camping out by a river where Louise often sought refuge from her family as a child. Mitch teaches his mom how to fish.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Mitch being fathered by a Black man definitely doesn't sit well with Louise's family, especially her mother, Margaret, who makes Mitch call her by her name rather than "Granny." Grandpa Elijah's attempts to disguise his distaste for Mitch don't fool either Louise or Mitch.
- Hot Pursuit: After having robbed a gas station following the owner making racist remaks about Mitch, Louise and Mitch are pursued in a high-speed police chase. This sequence takes place in a shooting gallery minigame where Mitch must try to shoot the tires of the pursuing police car, using the cursor to aim the rifle. His mother is very angry at Mitch for doing this after they escape, telling him he is lucky not to have been killed by the police.
- Immigrant Patriotism: Grandpa Elijah, who immigrated to the United States from Poland as a child, has American flags on prominent display in the family home and musters the family every day to raise and lower the family's outdoor flag, having Butch play a rather badly rendered version of The Star-Spangled Banner.
- Implausible Deniability: Margaret invokes this when Kathy admits that she also was inappropriately touched and possibly raped by Father Judah, despite flashbacks showing her accusing a younger Louise of lying about being abused.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Hutt, Father Judah, and Thomas and his mother.
- Karma Meter: Throughout the game, the choices you make for Louise and Mitch influence the outcome of Mitch's life, with three different meters represented: Mitch's inner strength, his empathy for other people, and his relationship with the legal system. Often, choices will increase one of these attributes while decreasing another.
- Laser-Guided Karma: It generally ends badly for anyone who tries to get in Louise's way or makes threats towards Mitch. This includes Louise's former boss Hutt, Father Judah, the racist gas station owner Donald, Thomas and his mother, and a county sheriff who is in the KKK attending a lynching.
- The Klan: Louise and Mitch are rescued by Thomas, a seemingly slow man who turns out to be a member of the local KKK and is also keeping three women locked up so he can rape them. The local country sheriff is also a member of the Klan. When Louise overhears Thomas talking about a Klan meeting, she goes there and discovers that they are about to hang a Black man. She comes to the rescue. Unfortunately, their victim, John, still ends up being murdered off-camera in revenge, as narrated by Mitch.
- Magical Native American: Timmy and his uncle, who send Louise on a peyote-driven spiritual quest when Mitch is bitten by a rattlesnake.
- Mama Bear: Louise overall, though this varies depending on the dialogue choices you make, which will in turn affect how Mitch turns out. When her son asks her if it was okay to "take candy" from Father Judah, Kathy shoots Father Judah in a fit of maternal rage.
- Missing Mom: The story ends with Louise's death.
- Nice Guy:
- Kiki, the owner of a cabaret where Louise used to dance, helps her out after she covers a dancer's last-minute cancelation, and even gives her extra money for Mitch.
- Timmy, a Magical Native American who rescues them after the car breaks down in the desert, despite his initial (and correct) suspicions that they are on the run from the law.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Even though some native English-speaking actors were employed, many of the Southern American characters sport noticeable Polish accents, as this game was made in Poland. In the case of Grandpa Elijah, this is justified as he is said to have immigrated to the United States from Poland.
- Pedophile Priest: Father Judah, the priest for Louise's family who is held in deep regard by Grandpa Elijah, the family patriarch. It is revealed that he not only molested Louise in childhood, with both her grandfather and her mother accusing her of lying, but also Louise's older sister Kathy and Kathy's son Butch.
- Press X to Not Die: The game's primary mechanic for advancing the story is clicking context-sensitive buttons. Some of these actions are also time-sensitive, with failure resulting in a game over.
- Racist Grandma: Margaret.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Father Judah and Thomas are both brutal rapists who got away with their crimes for years. Both of them have brutal justice administered to them by their victims.
- The Scapegoat: Butch breaks a window and tries to make Mitch take the blame for it. Depending on your subsequent choices, you can either have Mitch agree to accept the blame, have Louise ask Mitch to take the blame in order to keep the peace with the family, or can have Mitch and Louise stand firm and refuse to accept the blame for the window.
- Sexual Extortion: Louise's boss, Hutt, tries to force her to have sex with him in exchange for her severance pay. She steals his clothes and robs his cash register while a couple of the regular patrons who have grown to like Louise gang up on Hutt after they witness him hitting her while she tries to escape from him.
- Spoiled Brat: Butch, Kathy's son. The family justifies this in part because Butch's father was KIA while serving in Vietnam, but they also show open favoritism towards Butch to the point of bullying Mitch.
