Format: iPhone, iPod Touch
Release: Out now
Publisher: Dr Fun Fun
Developer: Smashing Studios

As a musician and artist, Daniel Johnston’s work is arresting and divisive. On record, he’s capable of sounding like the natural heir to Leadbelly one minute, while coming off as an implausibly untalented Tom Petty cover act unable to work his own mixing desk the next. Elsewhere, his drawings, depending on your point of view, are either a blunt evocation of the modern world’s strangest demons, or faux-naif scribbles produced by a man who’s been pathologically over-indulged for the last decade and a half.

You may not enjoy your encounter with Johnston’s world, then, but you’re not likely to forget it in a hurry either. As the basis for a videogame, however, he has a harder time standing out. Hi, How Are You, an iPhone puzzler built around the indie legend’s songs and drawings, is neither the blistering triumph you may have hoped for, or the hilarious, freewheeling disaster you might have feared. Instead, it’s something slightly more forgettable: a competent, workmanlike offering that despite – or perhaps because of – its obvious polish, can feel like something of a missed opportunity.

You can’t argue that the back catalogue doesn’t get a proper airing, though. Each of Hi, How Are You’s two dozen or so floating mazes are set inside one of Johnston’s distinctive felt-tip dioramas, while the game’s cel-shading graphics engine is fine-tuned for bringing his sketchy devils and wobbling freaks to life. Quavery refrains from a handful of standards loop over each level, and fans are regularly rewarded with additions to a growing gallery of unlockable artwork to explore in between rounds.

Meanwhile, the game beneath the branding blends shades of Archer Maclean’s Mercury and good old Marble Madness to reasonably decent effect, as the player leads the shape-shifting Jeremiah across a range of increasingly complex assault courses, with the simple task of passing over every green tile on the way to the exit without being squashed, poked, or abused by any of the wandering monsters. It’s not the most compelling of agendas, but the controls deliver the necessary precision – players can choose between tilt or touch set-ups – and there’s a respectable range of trophies and unlockables to pad out the package, alongside the – somewhat incongruous – option to upload your Achievements to Facebook.

While these are early days for this kind of transmedia project, Hi, How Are You still struggles too often to find a satisfying fusion of form and theme. Familiarity might be partly to blame: Videogames have been trading in surreal and primitive fairy tales for generations now, so Johnston’s guileless parade of floating eyeballs and grinning, stalk-eyed frogs can seem a bit 1987 at times. But there’s a deeper question of engagement, too. The game’s story of curses, quests, and casual devilry may echo a handful of Johnston’s preoccupations, but it’s hardly a reach for a million other platform-puzzlers, either, and there’s little else to suggest that, beneath the textures and Midi files, these sliding walkways and glowing checkpoints aren’t more than a simple skin-swap away from playing host to the adventures of Scooby Doo, The Simpsons, or the latest Peugeot instead.

All of which is understandable, of course. Finding a suitable expression for Johnston’s work in videogame form was never going to be an particularly easy task, but by simply clothing such a traditional experience in a thin coating of relevant assets, Smashing Studio’s game can seem sponsored by the singer-songwriter rather than genuinely inspired by him. Behind the idiot wind folk and whiny guitars, Johnston's most appealing quality has long been a willingness to acknowledge that his fairly blunt form of creativity is as likely to result is something awful as it is something wonderful. Hi, How Are You has a more calculated, businesslike approach to risk, however – a strategy that ultimately puts either outcome safely out of reach. [6]