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Yorick’s Revenge is a racing game that gives new meaning to the term “heads will roll.” This game also brings the funky psychedelia in such heavy swaths that even Jimmy Hendrix might have felt a little overwhelmed. Racing, while a fairly apt description of the gameplay, doesn’t remotely start to explain what Yorick’s Revenge is as a game. The racing in this game is less an objective than it is a thread that loosely knits together the insane amalgamation of components that make up the game.
In Yorick’s Revenge the player, in some sort of ironic Shakespearian reference, takes control of a disembodied skull rolling in a race against other disembodied heads. By tapping on the screen, players can urge the skull to roll faster and faster, and by using the jump button players can also make the skull bounce up and down to avoid obstacles or gain an advantage in the race. The environments are procedurally generated and with each game being different than the last, players are racing more against themselves than they are racing against the other heads, trying to get farther than they did last time. Their skull has a certain amount of health that is depleted as the skull hits different objects. Once that health is gone, the race is over.

Different skill levels and adjustable characteristics give the game some depth. Unfortunately, these familiar gaming conventions aren’t very successful in helping players make any sense of the game. There is so much going on during the races and it isn’t very clear what actions accomplish which objectives. In fact it’s not very clear whether the point of the game is to beat the other racers or just to go farther than they do. Bouncing the skull around the random environments that border on hallucination is fun in the way that throwing sparkling confetti in the air and watching it float around randomly is fun. There isn’t much focus to the game, but it is kind of interesting to see what it will do next.