Today we’re talking about a very short, but still very entertaining game: “The Franz Kafka Videogame”. Anyone who learned to hate this writer in high school like I did is probably just as surprised as I was that he got his own video game. I plunged into the adventure and can tell one thing: it was Kafkaesque.

I could now copy a short article from Wikipedia about who Kafka was and what made him special. I could also include a short sentence and state on a meta level that I could do that, but that I’m different. Anyway, google his name, there’s way too much to read about him. Are you confused now? Very good, because that’s exactly what this game is about.

But what exactly is this game? That is hard to say. It is a point & click game (not adventure – well, not really) in which Kafka’s stories and tales are processed in a very interesting way. Nothing really makes sense, and many of the puzzles seem very random and opaque. This is a point that would normally frustrate and upset me – but here it fits very well, as the puzzles are one thing: Kafkaesque.

Another reason the game doesn’t frustrate me is that it finds a happy medium. On the one hand, the rules of each puzzle (structured in individual, independent scenes) are completely unclear and rarely logical in any way. On the other hand, you only have limited options, so if in doubt you can achieve your goal with trial and error. I can only repeat myself: normally this would frustrate me very much – but here it fits exactly what it wants to represent. That’s why I see this game more as a kind of work of art than a game that’s supposed to entertain you.

Entertained I still felt though, because every solution to a puzzle came with a certain surprise, but in a positive sense. Since the game doesn’t force you to keep going forever – we finished it after about an hour and a half – it doesn’t get frustrating or boring. I think the playtime here is perfect to provide an interesting experience.

The story itself is very difficult to summarize; it’s not really important though either. What’s important is the feeling the game leaves you with – pure confusion mixed with a bit of surprise. I found the game to be very entertaining and was happy that we tried it out – so if you want to get really confused, it definitely gets a recommendation!

I barely went into the technical points, but there isn’t much to say. The game isn’t nearly complex enough to have any big problems – but it didn’t even have any small ones. I really liked the graphics and style. The music and sound effects were always very appropriate and I liked it – overall there is nothing to complain about here either.

What did you think of the game? Was it fun to watch or were you bored? Did you also read Kafka at school? Join the discussion on Discord!