There’s something nostalgic about pixel point-and-click games. They harken back to a time before controllers, when the standard computer mouse still had a ball that needed to be cleaned every so often, and the internet wasn’t flooded with guides to answer every tiny question you faced within the game. 

Thankfully, while AAA studios have sadly moved away from these simple gameplay loops in favor of repetitive and over-hyped sequels, there are still some indie developers out there, bringing new point-and-click adventures into the world for gamers to enjoy. One of these developers is DuckMadeOfWood, with D3AD HAND. 

Tackling darkness with humor

The world around us is, however you look at it, a scary place to be. Wars are raging around the world, would-be tyrants are in charge of entire countries, and there’s always an underlying fear that an idiot with access to a shiny red button will throw a tantrum one day and push it without thinking of the consequences. Nuclear weapons are scary, and it’s completely natural to want to ignore their existence and focus instead on what’s happening directly in front of us. 

D3AD HAND doesn’t do that. It does pretty much the opposite of that, but in the best way possible. 

Before we get into this, here’s a little bit of history for you. ‘Dead Hand’ is a real system set up by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In the case of a nuclear attack against Russia, the Dead Hand ‘Perimeter’ system would activate and, through a series of released rockets and signals, eventually release the entire nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union, now Russia, into the stratosphere. 

Now, this all sounds very scary and depressing. However, what’s a good and proven way to deal with hardship and terror? Humor. That’s where D3AD HAND comes in. DuckMadeOfWood takes that very real and terrifying threat to the world and throws comedy at it, and while the overarching theme is still dark, the humor on display does a lot to lift the gloom. 

Throwing humor at things to make them less scary is nothing new. It’s been studied and proved that being able to laugh at things that scare us takes away their power to cause fear, at least to some degree. I mean, what’s the best defense against a Boggart in Harry Potter? Laughter. 

A D3AD GOOD point-and-click

D3AD HAND is a point-and-click adventure where you play as Yuri, tasked with watching over a bunker where the initial Dead Hand rocket is housed. As with all point-and-clicks, things can seem pretty confusing at first, but if you thoroughly explore and click on everything, you will find the clues that eventually lead you in the right direction. 

Getting into the bunker is your first challenge, but it suddenly seems inconsequential when the Perimeter system malfunctions and you need to fix it before the nukes can fly.

Fixing all of the sensor machines within the bunker is hard work, but nothing is impossible if you make sure you’ve looked at everything and take things slowly. There are red herrings thrown in to sidetrack you, like any good point-and-click game has, such as a radioactive leak in the storage room that leads to nothing of note, but reaching the end point is fairly straightforward despite the lingering stress and panic. 

If you’re a fan of point-and-clicks in general, you’ll likely have played the Monkey Island series. It’s a behemoth of the genre, and DuckMadeOfWood is clearly aware of this, because there is one specific scene in which lines are almost directly quoted in the most brilliant way.

Good people are everywhere

Throughout D3AD HAND, one of the main themes, aside from the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation due to system malfunctions or human error, is Yuri and his innate goodness. He may be a soldier, but that doesn’t mean that he wants to fight or for doomsday to happen. He’s just a dude, doing his job, talking to the cat (your superior officer, somehow, and aptly named Stalin) about the rat infestation. 

Every single society on this planet has bad people, that’s true, but they all also have far more good people. People who want to just live their lives, do their jobs, go home to their families, and be happy. Yuri is one of these people, and while that fact is present in D3AD HAND, it’s even more present in the sequel content, R3D STAR. 

In R3D STAR, you meet a Babushka who lives in the forest in a house that she’s desperate to keep. During a conversation with her, she shows her distrust for all soldiers because of what has happened to her in her life, but Yuri goes to great lengths to prove himself to her. They eventually become friends, and despite being a small moment in the sequel, it has a lasting impact. 

Memorable for the right reasons

It only takes an hour or so to get through the main D3AD HAND game, with the R3D STAR sequel being considerably longer and far more complicated (to the point I had to email the developer for instructions because I was completely baffled). If you happen to love Stalin (the cat, of course) in the main game, you’ll be happy to know that the sequel is a joint adventure with him and Yuri, and you get to play as him, at least in part. 

Despite the darkness and haunting reality that D3AD HAND is based on, it’s hard to feel anything other than warmth while playing through the game, because the humor and voice acting are strangely comforting. You almost forget that it’s based on anything real at all. 

D3AD HAND was released in Fall 2024, and if you buy the game, you automatically get R3D STAR included. You can get it through Steam, and it’s well worth playing if you can find the humor in dark moments.