Nightdive puts out surprise 'definitive' update for 30-year-old I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

As a man who lives with one foot firmly in the past, little excites me more than an old game suddenly getting some out-of-the-blue new update. Obsidian suddenly returning to Pillars of Eternity 1 earlier this year? Pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to me. And now Nightdive has sprung up to slap a "definitive" update on ancient adventure game I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. This is a year of three Christmases for ol' Josh.

A point-and-click adventure based on Harlan Ellison's novel about a group of humans subjected to eternal torment by a misanthropic AI, voiced in the game by Ellison himself, I Have No Mouth has become a bit of a cult classic since its release in 1995. This is Nightdive's first patch for it since 2018, and the patch notes are actually pretty few. That doesn't mean they're not significant, though.

In essence, the patch updates the PC version of the game to match the console editions released in March this year. That means navigable menus, improved controller support, and in general an experience more suited to 2025 than 1995. It feels good! I've messed around with it a little, and the experience of playing a PC point-and-click adventure on a gamepad feels almost perplexingly natural.

I can't help but find the addition of an achievement system a little funny, though. I Have No Mouth is an unrelentingly grim story, and the endings in which horrible things happen to you are many. Hell, one of the characters you play as is more-or-less an elderly Josef Mengele. The notion of scrubbing through the whole game trying to get the narcotic pop of all the achievements is, well, it's just a very funny meeting between a short story originally written in the '60s and the videogames of the 21st century.

Anyway, here's the full list of patch notes (I told you they were short):

• Added modern menu options, allowing players to customize their experience as they prefer (screen size adjustments, background image selection, visual filters, aim sensitivity).
• Added in-game bonus content, including a fully localized manual and jukebox with the complete I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream soundtrack.
• Improved controller support, added pre-set shortcuts for smoother and more intuitive gameplay.
• Added an achievement system to encourage exploration and extend replayability.
• Added cloud saves, game progress is now stored and linked to the player’s account, allowing the game to continue being played across different devices.