Before Dan Harmon came into the limelight thanks to the success of Rick and Morty, and before Donald Glover acted as Childish Gambino, there was Community. A sitcom about Greendale Community College, featuring episodes about school-wide paintball fights, zombie invasions, record-breaking pillow forts, and the birth of new societies based on fledgling social media platforms.
The show follows six different personalities who are thrown into a study group who quickly become good friends as they navigate life, the strange happenings at school and try to get a passing grade. It has a very dear place in my heart and I still pronounce film nerd Abed’s phrase of ‘coolcoolcool’ every day. It’s a show I rewatch every few years, and recently I re-watched Digital Estate Planning, an episode in which the study group must play a video game to win their friend Pierce’s legacy. I told you, it’s a weird show.
It’s the kind of video game that looks cool but you know you’ll never play, like the foul-mouthed robot in Her, or the psychedelic trip of a game in Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication made by a real video game developers. Well, this one turns out is real, and it’s great. It’s at least ten years old, but it’s free to download and play and that’s all I’ve been doing in my spare time for the past two nights.
Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne looks exactly like it does on the show. It is a pixelated 2D platformer with an 8-bit soundtrack and sprites. The game was created by a team of volunteer developers and is open source, in case anyone wants to work on bug fixes or improvements. It is a colossal community effort (ha), which the creators believe is completed.
Choose from one of the six members of the study group and get in. I chose Troy because I am a huge childish Gambino fan. The sheer variety of costumes on offer is amazing – it feels like they have one from every episode. I chose Fiddla Please!, from an episode where Troy stars in an all-black rendition of Fiddler on the Roof. When he dies he says ‘Oy!’ Sensational. You can also rebind all the keys, which is great for comfort and accessibility. The in-game tutorials and prompts are even updated based on your chosen inputs, something many professional games don’t.
Within minutes of launching, the game reminded me of how hilarious Community was. The floating, disembodied head of Pierce’s father, Cornelius Hawthorne – who wears an ivory wig – appears in the exact same spot as in the episode, calling the study group a bunch of fruit junkies and sluts.
Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne is the kind of game I can see people saying wouldn’t be made today. It is covered in dixie flags and mocks everything an old coot like Cornelius would stand against. There is also a Valley of Lazyness leading to the US-Mexico border where the Chili Fields and Taco Town are located. It is a caricature of an old man’s distorted perception of everyone who is different and whom he considers less than him.
I didn’t venture far into Mexico, I ended up there by accident while looking for The Mines. I thought I’d beat the game in one sitting, maximum two, but I was completely wrong. This is not a small, cheap couple. It’s a bona fide video game. There’s a crafting system, side quests, dialogue trees, affection, followers, bosses, and deceptively hard platforming. It even has cheats!
One segment in the mines had me trying to stay on a minecart as I had to jump and duck over obstacles and bounce on cobwebs to gain enough height to clear a large obstacle. I must have died here at least ten times, I just didn’t expect it to be really hard. It’s never unfair though, and once I got the timing down, I shot over and felt the same sense of pride that I imagine all those Celeste players just keep on blasting.
What did I find at the end of the mine shaft? Well, a level eight Laser Lotus, of course! Pierce is part of a sect called Neo-Buddhism, the Community’s not-so-subtle jab at Scientology. These cultists have taken over the mine and their leader is the first boss I found. He’s not easy either. He shoots lasers – which increase in number as his health decreases – and has a jump attack that intercepts you as you try to get over him. Again, I died several times before beating him.
I played this game for two nights and barely scratched the surface. I’m currently trying to save a village from raging acorns – I have no idea what Cornelius has against them – and am completely distracted from the main mission. That’s why I can’t finish RPGs.
I’ve been busy exploring the mountain to get rid of this fucking Acorn King, but according to the game’s subreddit – that’s right, there’s still a relatively active community (ha) for this fever dream – there are still some many more locations that I haven’t even seen yet. “Is there a hidden entrance to the other side of the gay island towards the blue forest?” is a real question on the sub.
Community fans are a truly dedicated bunch. They made this game a reality and I am eternally grateful for that. I’m going to enjoy playing this on my vacation as it runs smoothly on my crappy laptop. I want to call it a perfect slice of nostalgia, but it’s so big it really is the whole pie. I just hope I didn’t bite off more than I can chew and this is a game I’ll finish eventually. Turns out there are even things to do after the game, so I’m not looking forward to my chances.
You can download Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne for free here.
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