Smile for Me REVIEW

It’s not always easy to evaluate a game, especially one that’s so weird and unique that it can’t be properly compared to other titles in the genre. That’s how I feel about Yugo Limbo’s and Gabe Lane’s Smile For Me, a first-person ‘nod-n-shake’ adventure that merges some traditional gameplay elements with a lot of bold new ideas. The result is a refreshing experience filled with peculiar and memorable characters and a surprisingly sad story, all wrapped up in a unique presentation that can be enjoyed by any fan of adventure games.

Players assume control of a mute young flower delivery man, as evidenced by some of the characters referring to you as ‘Flower kid’ (or Flower child, or just Flower, or just kid). For whatever reason, you have taken up residence in a place called “The Habitat”, a small community somewhere in the mountains which promises that people who are sad or down on their luck can come here to feel happy again. That may sound pleasant enough on the surface, but the creator and current leader of the Habitat is a mysterious man named Doctor Habit, who rarely shows himself and only does televised announcements using a puppet look-alike during the night, whose subtitles are riddled with childish spelling errors. He is obsessed with making people smile, but everyone living in the Habitat is miserable for various reasons. It’s not your job, but apparently you have “a way with people”, so it’s up to you to make them all happy again.

Smile for Me REVIEW