Adventures in Mac Gaming, Vol. 4

It wasn't that long ago that I was describing the agony that is trying to play games on an Apple Silicon Mac. One of these horrors was finding games that were just not compatible due to being older, 32-bit Mac software, making them unplayable on M1 and up. I've hoped that some developers would throw a bone to Mac players and update their games to work, but the reality is that old games are likely going to be left in the past unless they can be profitable ventures. The reality of gaming being a business where they have to profit off what they do really sucks, so I doubt, like, 2K is going to patch Bioshock Infinite to work with 64-bit software to appease some guy who has a blog that hardly anyone reads. Yet.

But, hark, what is this? It's been over 9 years, but like a Randy Orton RKO outta nowhere, Please, Don't Touch Anything was given a huge update that also included unexpected compatibility with Apple Silicon. It's not exactly going to push the hardware or anything, but this game was a pretty wild cult classic in its day, and for a whole $5 one can get a pretty entertaining few days out of it, solving its mysteries. If anything, it should be the kind of proof of concept that yes, your old game can get some extra attention pandering to a userbase of gamers that may or may not just be me and maybe one or two crazy people on the street corner.

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Your co-worker needs to take a leak, and they just ask you to stand guard in front of this strange machine, but asks you to not touch anything. What do you do? Well, you could do what you're told and not touch anything, which will net you one of 25 different endings. Or you could give in to your curiosity, press that big red button, flip the switch, press the button again... and nuke the city that is ominously being shown on the monitor. Or you could press the button a bunch of times, revealing screwdrivers, hammers, or Roman numerals, which when pressed correctly leads to the opening of even more panels and buttons. Ultimately it's a puzzle game of figuring out what they all do and the game encourages you to press everything. It's very simple but clever - most of the solutions are right on the screen, but it's just a matter of figuring out what that random stuff means.

There's not a lot of replay value in a game like this once you find all the endings, though ironically there's an Achievement for erasing your save and starting from scratch once you have unlocked them all. It's funny because unfortunately the game doesn't have cloud saves. I discovered this when going from my Macbook Air to my Mac Mini, forcing me to start all over rather than picking up where I left off.. However, I didn't mind having to run through and experience the vibe of Please, Don't Touch Anything fresh - there's something unsettling about the whole game that I love. A real "what the hell?" kind of atmosphere, as nothing about what you see or do makes much sense, unless you think of it as some weird Soviet-era computer designed by the KGB or something. Even then you wonder what evil person would concoct machine like this.

You can do a whole lot (I repeat: A WHOLE LOT) worse on Steam with $5 than a copy of Please, Don't Touch Anything, despite being a decade old. I already owned the game years ago when I was still on a Windows PC, but given what the developer did to update the game enough to work on a newer 64-bit Mac, this is a good opportunity to encourage other developers to do the same by picking up a copy now if you haven't before. It's simple looking but deviously complex, has a great soundtrack, and has enough endings that it'll keep you busy for a weekend trying to figure them all out.