Her Majesty’s SPIFFING (PC)

Her Majesty’s SPIFFING is a point and click adventure game that comes right out of the gate with some dialogue that will throw the player for a loop. The first interaction between the game’s lead characters kicks off with a reference to Star Trek only for them to immediately make a meta acknowledgement that they hope no one will get the wrong impression about the game’s writing relying too heavily on references, and to follow up this self-aware and self-deprecating jab at its own opening, the game then tries to assure you that it also won’t be relying heavily on the British stereotypes that were in abundance in the game’s opening and advertising. The player is left wondering just how the game might play out now that their expectations were pretty much immediately addressed and dismissed, but despite opening up with assurances that this game won’t indulge in such types of humor, it goes on to mostly be just on the nose meta jokes, cliche British stereotypes, and plenty of more empty references to other media.

The game’s humor is definitely meant to be its main appeal, and yet it seems to have been written with little imagination and a lot of leaning back on the easiest type of jokes that can emerge from the situations the characters find themselves in. The game begins with a surge of its humor stemming from its overwhelmingly British presentation, and seeing the Queen walk with a pair of corgis to a bunch of British guards running their new space program in their bearskin hats is an acceptable and amusing injection of it to kick things off. The Queen’s desire to return to colonialism to make up for the country leaving the EU has lead to her searching for places in space to spread the British Empire, establishing the Special Planetary Investigative Force for Inhabiting New Galaxies to do so. And so, a pair of rather incompetent astronauts from S.P.I.F.F.I.N.G. set off into the unknown to find a planet they can plant a flag in. Captain Frank Lee English and his companion Aled Jones are then left to carry most of the short experience on their shoulders exclusively, and they do by making surface level jokes about things the British are known for. Besides name-checking cities convincingly though, it certainly feels like the game leans on the “tea and crumpets” stereotypes excessively and to the degree I had to look up to see if the developer was even from the U.K. since most of the cliches could have come from anyone in the world. Billy Goat Entertainment is based on Northern Ireland though so they should be able to at least go a little deeper with their nationalistic jokes, but even as other nations come up, the jokes at their expense are also such basic retreads that it feels like no heart was put into writing the game’s dialogue.

The self-aware humor also has a frequent problem with being meta without really saying anything amusing about the action they’re acknowledging. The game is aware of the legacy of point and click adventures that came before it and lampoons their sometimes obtuse inventory puzzles or arbitrary obstacles, but simply having a character lay it out for what it is isn’t a joke so much as an acknowledgement of how things are. Her Majesty’s SPIFFING seems to think these are fairly funny based on how often it likes to acknowledge its status as a video game with limitations in its design and budget, even the early ending basically admitting they didn’t have the cash to keep going. Far too often though it feels like the writing just relied on the first draft of a joke where the details are laid out without any commentary, criticism, or unique twist to pointing out the trappings of the genre or the approach or other aspects of the game like its heavy leaning on anglophilic references.

On the bright side, the game is throwing so many jokes at the player constantly that things do sometimes work out in its favor. So long as the barrage of weaker jokes don’t harden your heart, the game does stumble into some amusing portions such as Captain English fumbling with the ship’s increasingly unresponsive controls. Perhaps one of the most effective moments of its meta humor takes place when English spends a good amount of time collecting items for a puzzle and can lose them entirely if you do it wrong, but when he turns to Aled and jokingly asks if he happens to have those items on him, Aled just opens up pouches in his space suit and produces the rather esoteric items without much comment. It is certainly absurd in that moment but also much more subdued than the characters constantly winking at the camera or simply stating what the joke is meant to be rather than working it in with a degree of cleverness.

Despite the on-the-nose writing and frequent lack of creativity, the mouthpieces for the humor weren’t quite doomed. All of the game’s dialogue is voiced, and Captain English, despite having some boorish and old-fashioned tendencies, comes of as an amicable oaf. His Welsh co-pilot Aled is a bit more sarcastic and down-to-earth to balance out the eccentricities of English, but since most of their time is spent as vehicles for joke delivery, they don’t get to stand out too much in this very short adventure. They are at least a step above the French astronaut you encounter who is just a bundle of all the cartoonish jokes about the French that people automatically conjure if asked for such humor.

Her Majesty’s SPIFFING is split between mostly being on the space ship and spending some time on a planet you intend to colonize, the player solving small puzzles along the way to progress the plot. Most of the plot is Captain English trying to keep the ramshackle spaceship running properly, sometimes after causing the problems himself, and thankfully the limited spaces of the game mean that problem solving isn’t made too hard to figure out. Sometimes the game will lay out puzzles and items that you’re meant to remember for later, but since the variables in play never get excessive, you won’t spend too long wondering what must be done and can instead be experimenting with available options to solve your problem.

Unfortunately, Her Majesty’s SPIFFING can be glitchy at times like when a game controller in one room was available to be selected from another and doing so lead to Captain English getting stuck in an infinite loop of walking into the wall until I reloaded the game. The player needs to sometimes examine or combine objects to make progress, but despite making fun of obtuse puzzle solutions, the sequence of events involved in getting yourself a properly sized rubber glove that English can use to touch an electrical fence does seem a little unintuitive in retrospect. Navigating for the puzzles is probably harder than solving most of them, as moving around in 3D space means sometimes the region for triggering interaction with an object is finicky. On top of that, the interaction wheel is a little clunky when it feels most objects could be picked up or described rather than splitting up the functions into additional separate menu options. For the most part though, the point and click portions won’t irritate and some might even have appropriately silly setups like having to find a way to calm down frogs inside a crane game so you can grab them. It’s just a shame the puzzles weren’t a more frequent source of humor than the constant commentary of the SPIFFING crew.

THE VERDICT: Since its point and click problem solving is mostly forgettably decent when it’s not a little rickety, Her Majesty’s SPIFFING is mostly hoping its humor is going to win a player’s heart. However, its constant barrage of basic British stereotypes, creatively-empty self aware humor, and references without much substance means that a lot of its jokes fall flat. The game does squeeze in so many quips and puns into its short runtime that it will likely tickle your funny bone a few times, but it does so amidst a game that is otherwise crowded with indulgent and unimaginative jokes that aren’t well written or fresh. The length at least means it doesn’t go on so long the joke writing becomes unbearable, but it certainly feels like this point and click isn’t going to amuse much unless you set your expectations and standards rather low.

And so, I give Her Majesty’s SPIFFING for PC…

A BAD rating. Most of Her Majesty’s SPIFFING’s attempts to tell a joke usually sit in the zone where you might groan and roll your eyes at them, but you can press on despite the game repeatedly trotting out well-worn tropes and thinking it’s fine if it says it is intentionally doing so. The nationalistic stereotypes are so generic they at least can’t feel offensive but they are also so bland that they lack any sort of punch, and in a game that is trying to make you laugh every minute, it’s a bit unfortunate how much time you’ll sit silently in your chair and wait for something that might actually amuse you. It has its moments in the same way a laugh-track laden sitcom written by committee is bound to land some hits due to the quantity of the jokes told, but Her Majesty’s SPIFFING at least keeps itself from being a total bore by having some decent if unexceptional puzzle solving between the quips. The game feels as unwilling to stoke its brain for more creative humor as it is unwilling to challenge the player’s problem solving skills too much, but it also makes some unusual barriers to the game flow in the form of the awkward interaction menus and mostly pointless free 3D movement.

Her Majesty’s SPIFFING may not excel as a point and click adventure, but to be less tedious and dull it certainly needs a script rewrite more than puzzle revisions. Being self aware, making references, and even leaning on cliches about the United Kingdom can all be done well and in ways that don’t feel hollow, but so much of the writing here only knows these can be funny without considering how to twist them into something that is actually a joke rather than a wink and a nudge. The most important takeaway though has to be if you’re going to build a game around its humor almost entirely, don’t phone it in like they did in Her Majesty’s SPIFFING.