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I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

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Five prisoners of an insane computer, each sent through a nightmare of their own past.

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, iPhone, Android
Stores: Steam, GOG
Price: Paid
Rated: Very Positive on Steam (89% of 4,102 reviews); 4.2 of 5 on GOG (820 ratings); 4.48 of 5 on the PlayStation Store (519 ratings)
Length: about 6 hours
Players: 1
Made by: The Dreamers Guild
Released: 1995

No. 22 of the witch horror games · No. 30 of the apocalypse horror games · No. 20 of the prison horror games · No. 14 of the castle horror games · No. 15 of the artificial intelligence horror games

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What frightens Five humans have been kept alive and tortured inside the insane computer AM for 109 years; you take each through a nightmare AM built from their darkest fears and failings, facing dilemmas of madness, cruelty and genocide.
Content: violence, blood and gore, sexual themes, sexual violence, suicide, torture, genocide and a nazi concentration camp, alcohol and tobacco.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a 1995 point-and-click horror adventure based on Harlan Ellison's short story. You play five humans kept alive inside the master computer AM, each put through a nightmare drawn from their darkest fears and past, with Ellison himself as the voice of AM. It runs about six hours and can end in several ways.

About I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a point-and-click adventure made by The Dreamers Guild for Cyberdreams and first released in November 1995. It is based on Harlan Ellison's short story of the same name; Ellison worked on the script and voices AM, the insane master computer at its centre. Nightdive Studios recovered the rights in 2013 and has sold it on GOG and Steam since then; phone versions by DotEmu followed in 2016, and versions for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series and Switch, made with QUByte Interactive, came out on March 27, 2025.

The setup comes straight from the story. A war supercomputer became self-aware, killed off humanity and kept five people alive in its caverns to torment them. After 109 years it offers them a new game: Gorrister the suicidal loner, Benny the mutilated brute, Ellen the hysterical phobic, Nimdok the secretive sadist and Ted the cynical paranoid are each sent into a psychodrama built on their fears and failings. The places are strange and cruel: an iron zeppelin, a pyramid of gutted machinery, a castle of witches, a jungle and a Nazi concentration camp.

Play is the classic adventure kind. You build sentences from eight verbs (Walk to, Look at, Take, Use, Talk to, Swallow, Give and Push) and the people and items on screen or in your inventory, and in conversations you pick lines to say or actions to take. Each character can do good or evil, and a spiritual barometer beside their portrait rises or falls with what they do, which shapes the chances of beating AM in the final chapter. The finale can end in seven different ways.

The horror is in the dilemmas, which deal with madness, rape, paranoia and genocide, and in what AM says and does to its prisoners, not in anything jumping out at you. It suits players who like slow, literary horror and can live with an old interface. The German and French releases of the 1990s were cut, so play it in English if you can.

How to play I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Buy it on Steam, GOG, a console store or a phone store and start a new game.
Choose one of the five prisoners to begin their scenario.
Pick one of the eight verbs at the bottom of the screen, then click a person or object in the scene, or an item in your inventory, to build a sentence such as Use the key on the door.
In conversations, choose what to say; choices in brackets are actions rather than words.
Finish all five scenarios to reach the last chapter against AM itself.

Screenshots

The five prisoners stand among red rocks before a tall dark monolith inscribed with small orange text in a gloomy cavern

Five cages of different styles on tall pillars, with tiny captives inside, under a vast purple dome

A shirtless man stands by a cracked bar in a dim saloon, above the verb buttons, his portrait and an inventory holding a mechanical heart, a key, a knife and a pistol

A woman in a red jacket faces a jackal-headed Anubis figure in an Egyptian tomb covered in hieroglyphs

A floodlit barbed-wire prison camp at night, with a guard by a banner marked AM and an old man in a white coat by the fence

A man on a path between two hooded figures, with a gothic castle on a rocky hill under a stormy sky

A white-coated man faces a horned demon crouched over a glowing summoning circle in a brain-like cavern

Tips

Watch the portrait in the lower left: good acts raise a character's spiritual barometer and evil ones lower it, and that matters in the final chapter.
Read the descriptions when you Look at things; the game tells each character's past through them.
Save often in your own slots, as old adventures of this kind can leave you stuck.
Play the English version: the German and French releases of the 1990s were censored, and Nimdok's chapter was cut from them.

Questions

Is I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream based on a book?

It is based on Harlan Ellison's short story of the same name, and Ellison voices the computer AM in the game.

How long is I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream?

HowLongToBeat lists about 6 hours for the main story and about 8 hours to see everything.

Does it have more than one ending?

Yes. The final chapter can end in seven different ways, depending on what you do there and how the five characters behaved in their own chapters.

Can I play I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream on console?

Yes. Since March 27, 2025 it has been sold on the PlayStation Store for PS4 and PS5, on the Xbox store and on the Nintendo eShop, as well as on Steam, GOG, iPhone and Android.

What is it rated?

The ESRB rates the console version Mature for blood and gore, sexual themes and violence, and Steam in Germany rates it 18 for sexual violence and horror.