The 2015 indie, puzzle-solving video-game Please Don't Touch Anything is a great example of allusions as a way of predicting the ending of something. In this game, that would be predicting the ending of the world! As you play the game you unlock a variety of apocalyptic endings (indicated by the yellow lights at the lower left of the desk), many of which are allusions to various Sci-Fi and Fantasy stories. The stickers circled in white in the two photos above include Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cthulhu, Futurama, and Back to the Future. Some of these stories are more influential than others in pointing you to understanding the clues you've discovered, so you can unlock a new apocalypse. At least, that's clearly the intent. The images above are taken from part 1 and part 2 of MatPat's GTLive streaming of the game, and he points out the difficulties of figuring out the 2001: A Space Odyssey ending. The clues from Odyssey are a black-light diagram of the solar system with a path going past Pluto (which Mat did realize was an Odyssey allusion) and the hint: 0 - 23, 1 - 4, and 2 - 1. He got stuck, though, because he couldn't figure out that the latter hint was telling him the placing of the numbers on the left in the proper order for one of the keypads. 

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Which gets at one universal problem of allusions: without the proper context they can go over one's head. In this game, the allusions are both hint and reward, but they can be futile hints when they aren't clear enough to register.  

1. Analysis: As stated elsewhere on this site, allusions are a database of information based on a collective cultural consciousness. If you haven't seen these movies, you won't recognize their clues, endings, or reward stickers. That doesn't mean you can't solve the game, though. In your scholarly opinion, does the Sci-Fi/Fantasy undergirding of this game ultimately add to or detract from the ease of play and enjoyability? Why? What works and what doesn't?

2. Composition: If you were tasked with adding or redoing the hints in this game for the 2001: A Space Odyssey ending (or any of the others, if you've played the game), how would you design them? What would you add to make the reference more clear, without being explicit, so the player could piece together what they need to do (like typing in the year in the movie title to unlock its ending)?

   • Or, what Sci-Fi or Fantasy tale would you include in this game as another alternate, apocalypse ending? What clues would you give to direct the player to solve the puzzle(s) for that ending?​