Was Keen 4-6 a kids game?

[dark]

Here's something I've been thinking about.

The game industry was primarily focused on children in the early 90s, like kids under 12 years old. Keen was certainly played by children, characters like princess Lindsey were added to the games due to fan mail coming in from children... So in that respect, sure, keen is a game for children.

But there's something about Keen that just appeals to me no matter my age. i never feel like keen is overly easy or only of interest for children. I don't think the presentation of keen is overly cute or soft. Keen himself as a player sprite looks quite stoic and is not smiling (no mouth) as he's going about taking care of business.

While the game has some cartoon like visuals, it has plenty of scary and serious enemies and scenes that give it a bit of an edge. I'm thinking of enemies like the wormouth, arachnut, sprite and berkeloid to name a few off the top of my head, and visuals like keen getting immobilized by a bloog with a club, followed by Keen bouncing around with his face in surprise or agony as he plays out the die animation. You also have level graphics such as the eyeballs hanging from the ceiling in keen 6 or keen landing on sharp spikes or motorized drills... There may not be blood, but all of these have quite a bit more of an edge than something that a company like Disney might put together, or that an early 90s game designed explicitly for children, such as Putt Putt Goes to the Moon or Fatty Bears Birthday Surprise, might have.

Instead of it being a game for children, I get the sense, ID made a game that they (as adults) thought was cool, and it just happened to star a child as the main character. Obviously it's not full of gore like later ID games such as Doom, but I don't feel the sense that ID dumbed the game down for it to be safe or to appeal primarily to younger audiences.

[Nospike]

I would guess that making it suitable for all ages was a conscious decision by id. Their inspiration for making this type of game was Mario, they wanted a game with a similar kind of universal appeal. The cartoonishness was more down to Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack's personal vision I'd say. You can tell they were inspired by the campiness of old sci-fi from the 1960s and earlier among other things, especially in Keen 6.

[Benvolio]

Keen sits in the optimal part of the Venn diagram between adults and kids. It is a child-friendly universe but is neither pateonising nor infantilising.

That said, in real terms, in 2025, adult engagement with Keen is rooted in a connection to a previous childhood, and is quite unlikely to be due to de-novo exposure to the game in the aduld age group. On the other hand, in 1990, I'm sure adults were drawn in by the charms of Keen (I would count all episodes in this, not just Galaxy). Nothing like this had ever been in the grasp of being available at home for thousands if not millions of computer users. It must have been mind blowing.

The Keen mobile game from a few years ago, on the other hand, is highly infantilising, and guess what... nobody wanted to know!

[dark]

Keen sits in the optimal part of the Venn diagram between adults and kids. It is a child-friendly universe but is neither pateonising nor infantilising.

That said, in real terms, in 2025, adult engagement with Keen is rooted in a connection to a previous childhood, and is quite unlikely to be due to de-novo exposure to the game in the aduld age group. On the other hand, in 1990, I'm sure adults were drawn in by the charms of Keen (I would count all episodes in this, not just Galaxy). Nothing like this had ever been in the grasp of being available at home for thousands if not millions of computer users. It must have been mind blowing.

The Keen mobile game from a few years ago, on the other hand, is highly infantilising, and guess what... nobody wanted to know!

That description of it not being patronizing or infantilizing is a very good way of putting it, and I whole heartedly agree.

[Dave216]

I think the vibe of the games is somewhat consistent all the way through the series except for the finale. As disturbing as some enemies might seem, they look cartoonish enough for what they were going for.Freakish as Keen6 may look, I think the crown goes to Bloog Control Center.

And I think nothing really seems off-putting or too disturbing at that level on the surface, but the music track is nothing like what we've experienced in the previous episodes. Ominous sirens, hidden Morse code, purposely designed corridors that confuse you. I can appreciate this level today because it feels like a nice build-up to end the game on. To me, this is the only scary/creepy thing in the whole series, and it's only carried by the soundtrack.

I still don't get why Keen couldn't fly to the station using his own rocket, but I guess it's a gameplay thing and not something to overanalyze.

[dark]

Yeah bloog control center definitely has a darker feel.

As for riding the bloog rocket to the space area instead of the bwb rocket, here's some ideas I just thought of for fun:

-Maybe the bwb rocket lands like a plane (even though it doesn't seem to have wheels?) and needs a bit of a runway for takeoff and landing, and the bloog base in the sky only has enough space for a rocket doing a vertical takeoff/landing

-Keen needs to sneak into that area instead of charging in and alerting everyone he is coming, both so that he isn't shot down when approaching, and so that the bloogs don't just whisk Molly off elsewhere or put her under an even more ridiculous guarded area because they know he is coming

-keen doesn't know where the bloogs hid Molly, so he has to necessarily search a lot of places looking for her, instead of simply driving his rocket immediately over to the final level. In this case keen is extremely lucky he only needs to check out 18 or so levels, instead of every inch of the planets surface! And lucky the bloogs aren't shuffling her around, like to a level that he's already gone through.

[Snortimer]

You can tell they were inspired by the campiness of old sci-fi from the 1960s and earlier among other things, especially in Keen 6.

Interesting. Anything in particular that you can name?

I still don't get why Keen couldn't fly to the station using his own rocket, but I guess it's a gameplay thing and not something to overanalyze.

I assumed there was a force field around it that would only let their own rocket through.

[Nospike]

You can tell they were inspired by the campiness of old sci-fi from the 1960s and earlier among other things, especially in Keen 6.

Interesting. Anything in particular that you can name?

Eat at Joe's, the Stupendous Sandwich of Chungella IV, the ACME Oracle and its activation procedure, the hodgepodge cobbled together Bloog architecture, it all has that kind of vibe, to me at least.

[Snortimer]

You can tell they were inspired by the campiness of old sci-fi from the 1960s and earlier among other things, especially in Keen 6.

Interesting. Anything in particular that you can name?

Eat at Joe's, the Stupendous Sandwich of Chungella IV, the ACME Oracle and its activation procedure, the hodgepodge cobbled together Bloog architecture, it all has that kind of vibe, to me at least.

And what movies? I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with that era...

[Nisaba]

And what movies? I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with that era...

[dark]

Mind blown

[Keening_Product]

Thanks for posting those comparisons, Nisaba - I'd not made the connection!

On whether Keen was a game for kids: apart from early learning software, what constituted a game for children was VERY different in the 90s to now, and the number and nature of adults playing games was also very different. The context in which they were made was also very different, with a lot more small and self-publishers allowing a much less corporate review process and a lot more to sneak in. Devs just referenced the media they enjoyed.

Plus, graphical limits really changed immersion. An FPS shooter is a dramatically different experience to the 2D shooters, which the previous generation was already, in a way, desensitised to thanks to space invaders etc.

For me, difficult games full of references which went right over my head were just a part of the format for single-digit-age me. For the most part, it was just what was shareware anyway.

[Roobar]

Of course it was nade for kids. It was too powerful. I mean I'm still hooked to this fn shi1t to this date

[Keening_Product]

The context in which they were made was also very different, with a lot more small and self-publishers allowing a much less corporate review process and a lot more to sneak in.

Have been thinking a little about this the last couple days and I'm revising this part – kids' cartoons then also wouldn't fly today, and the olds then definitely did have a basic cultural context in which to understand them.