Dave Goes Nutz

Dave has gone nuts — literally. I don't know the publisher's name, but back in the nineties on MS-DOS, a game with a title like that could only be one thing: a moderately half-baked program where the hero sneaks through random environments collecting stuff. And that's exactly what Dave Goes Nutz is.

It's a strange hybrid of point-and-click and platformer. You control Dave (who you either love or love to hate — both work), moving across an asymmetrical game ground packed with boxes, stairs, and objects. It's not a classic platformer with jumping over chasms — more like a slow puzzle-laden stroll with a splash of action and plenty of peeking around corners. You can feel the old soul in it — the days when commands were typed and graphics weren't the priority, but jokes and ideas were.

The mechanics are simple to the point of boredom. You click, Dave shuffles in that direction. You collect items, solve basic puzzles, occasionally fall or get eaten by something, then start over. It's neither difficult nor particularly clever — it feels more like therapy for people who enjoy wandering through levels and biting their nails when things don't work out. The 1993 graphics look like a painting on paper that someone brought to life on a computer — pixelated, simple colors, charming more by accident than design.

Dave Goes Nutz didn't spark a revolution or become a cult classic. It's your typical MS-DOS oddball cobbled-together game someone made because they could. It would've ended up in old game archives without a second glance, except for being just that kind of curiosity — it has personality, even if it's a little twisted.

Today it's worth playing only if you enjoy hunting through these retro oddities and wondering what possessed people in the nineties. It's more of a museum exhibit of human imagination in computers than entertainment — but that's precisely what makes it interesting when you load it up. Give it a try without feeling like you're wasting time, since time's not really a factor anymore.