"um.
i'm stuck."
— The protagonist, upon entering the cupboard
UIN is a free surreal adventure game made in Game Maker by the indie cult developer Matt Aldridge, under the handle Biggt. Aldridge is best known for his mind-boggling experimental series La La Land. You play as an unnamed boy with scraggly, sparse hair who follows his brother into a cupboard to figure out what he's up to, only to find himself trapped in a depressing, monochromatic, monster-filled dimension, eventually unraveling an abstract grasp at what his family's been up to.
Though Biggt, under that alias, seems to be AWOL, you can still download the game from here
. The Game Maker Community thread for UIN is here. As of 2010, the game is at version 1.01.
UIN contains examples of:
- all lowercase letters: The dialogue. Often ops out of punctuation, too.
- Another Dimension: The game is set in one that is monochromatic and filled with monsters.
- Another Side, Another Story: Special mode, in which you play as your brother, sending minions from a hovering ship in order to destroy fish people. Apparently it's impossible to win.
- Berserk Button: Giving your brother the doll.
- Big Bad: The protagonist's brother is the one controlling the monsters and holding the scientist's wife hostage, though he is doing it on behalf of their father, who needs the monsters and girl to live.
- Bizarro Fiction: Most of Biggt's stuff is.
- Creepy Doll: The boss after the sail boat area is a giant doll.
- Creepy Good: The jagged-outline, balding protagonist.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: In order to progress past the cave, you need to lure the nuthatch into a black sun, presumably killing it, so you can steal its egg.
- Damsel in Distress: The scientist's wife is being held in a room, made to play piano endlessly.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The only colors you will see are purple and the skin color of the man in the TV.
- Down the Rabbit Hole
- Eldritch Abomination:
- Capybara, the large, spidery legged monsters who appear out of no where and take up the height of the screen, spew what appear to be swarms of flies from their orb weaver stomachs and have peanut-shaped heads with perpetually screaming mouths. If you hit them once, their body will disappear, and their head and all its wonderful gnashing teeth will come flying after you.
- Also the okapi, enormous maggots whose presence is preceded only by eerie scratching as they crawl across the map. Not only do they follow you through rooms, but to defeat them, you must shoot a place appendage into their mouths, upon which they will spew the black fly matter and several teeth-like creatures which attack you.
- Fake Difficulty: The wacky controls will kill you quickly and often. Especially since enemies can often catch up with you when going between different "rooms" on a map and your recovery time is almost nonexistent. Not to mention your hit box is pretty large.
- Foreshadowing:
- The knickknacks around the bedroom you start in are the spitting images of the enemies you fight in the game.
- Around halfway through, you have to do a slide puzzle with a TV containing a man's face on it. Said TV turns out to be the face of your father.
- Fungus Humongous: In the background of the area where you unlock the chest.
- Gotta Kill Them All: Though most enemies spawn in droves, each species comes in a finite number. After you've killed at least one, pressing space will bring up a menu that keeps track of how many are left. Eradicating a species can sometimes give you an ability that's needed to progress through the game. In fact, in order to open the door in heaven leading to the scientist's wife, you must eliminate every species.
- Guide Dang It!: A lot of players have trouble figuring out how to get the DIG ability. You just have to kill all the spiders in the cave.
- Guilt-Based Gaming: When you lose Special mode, you see Father in his chair saying, "Why?" before exploding. Because of your failure.
- Heart Container: Several found by digging, scattered randomly throughout the game. You can buy maps that give you hints on their locations.
- It May Help You on Your Quest:
- The first NPC gives you the PUSH ability when you dig out the treasure for him.
- Later, the scientist in space gives you a bomb at least three times your size.
- Leap of Faith: Several times:
- Into a puddle of quicksand early in the game.
- In the cave, jumping down beneath the black sun takes you back to the cupboard entrance.
- The cliff past the bird's nest is a 1-hit KO if you jump off.
- The baby bird drops you off in a volcano.
- The cliff by the rocket ship.
- Life Meter: You have one represented by small bars. It has a penchant for emptying extremely quickly.
- Mini-Game:
- In the underwater volcano area, there is a fish who can play a shuffle clam game with you.
- To unlock the warping chest, there's a slide puzzle of a TV with a man's face, which happens to be your father.
- Noodle People
- Ominous Music Box Tune: It first appears as a boss theme, but then plays during most if not all of the future cutscenes.
- Pacifist Run: To unlock Special mode, you have to get to your brother's house without having shot a single enemy.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: When you die and go to heaven, the soundtrack is the opening measures of Debussy's Clair de Lune.
- Shout-Out: The mustachioed fish man running the clam game is eerily similar to the one from La La Land 2.
- Soundtrack Dissonance:
- The underwater area features a desert-esque BGM with wind sound effects.
- In the area where you land after being shot out the volcano, you are tasked with completing a slide puzzle to some of the most absurdly epic space music ever.
- Swallowed Whole: At one point underwater, you can swim through the open mouth of an enormous fish. Incidentally, your brother has a house inside its spacious stomach. It even has a mailbox.
- Theme Naming: Sort of. Most if not all of the enemies are named ironically after species of animals they are most definitely not. The large screetching buzzards, for example, are called nuthatches.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Your brother after giving him the doll and meeting him in the rocket ship area cave.
- Understatement: The boy says "aw geez..." after witnessing his father die via head explosion.
- Under the Sea: The volcano, strangely enough, leads to an underwater area.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: The sky riding the bird.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The brother gets in the protagonist's way at everybody opportunity, sending monsters after them, and is holding the scientist's wife hostage, making her play piano 24/7, in order to keep his father alive.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: The main character only goes through all this because he is stuck in a dimension of hostile monsters and has no idea what to do. After dying a myriad times (the game actually has a death count after you finish it) and exploring a surreal dimension — while being constantly belittled by his brother, no less — he finally can go back home, only to find out those monsters he killed were what was keeping his father alive.
- Your Head Asplode: Father, after both beating the game because you killed all the monsters keeping him alive and losing Special mode and disappointing him.
