Panic! is an obscure Sega CD game with a "plot" motivated by absolute nonsense and a weird fixation on Easter Island Moai heads a couple decades before the internet got ahold of them as a meme. It is also probably among the most understandably hit or miss and "not for everyone" things I've ever encountered. In the same way I find it one of the most entertaining experiences I've ever had, someone else could just as easily be annoyed and even bored by it.
Panic!'s "gameplay" is quite literally just pushing buttons. You end up in a scenario, you have a choice of buttons to choose from a interface for that scene, you press one, something happens, and if you press the right one you move on the next scenario (of which the connection with the one you just came from is dubious at best). There's different amounts of buttons for each scene ranging from just 2 or 3 for a few, to over a dozen rarely in some cases. Also there are multiple different scenarios that are possible outcomes of progression in some scenes, so there's a sort of tiered branching tree and navigating to the end through the tree with your button presses is the goal. In theory you could maybe get insanely lucky and pick the right button every time and the game would simply be pushing buttons through loosely connected weird settings to the very end with nothing very entertaining at all except the art and opening/closing scenes of the story.
The real "substance" of Panic! comes from pushing the wrong buttons. When you push a button that doesn't result in you progressing onward to another scene, usually some event happens, then you're taken back to the button interface you were just at. So some levels can become a process of elimination (or you push all the wrong buttons intentionally to see what each scenario has to offer). 90% of the "wrong" button events do something with the scenario you're currently in;. Let's use an example of a scene of a group of buttons for some reason hooked up to a T-rex skeleton in a museum; one button can have the skeleton try to eat you, another might make it do a goofy dance, another might have a bigger skeleton chase the T-rex off or the like. Two more rare possibilities exist in specific scenes as well. One of these seems like you're going to progress but instead you cut to a scene where you get some really odd one liner from one of the very bizarre NPCs that inhabit the game's strange world, then back your buttons as before. Another are boobytrapped buttons which are very rare and present in only a fraction of the games total scenarios, that for some reason cause the destruction of a real world monument in the game like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben or something. I can't fathom why this happens, but it does, so you can either try to avoid them, or collect all acts of terrorism which the handily game tracks for you! Then there are also some choice that progress you sideways or backwards along the tree of scenes and even some sections you can end up in loops. So the fun of the game is actually navigating back and forth through this labyrinth of scenarios with your button presses and seeing what weirdness the game has to offer.
The greatest strength of the game's value as entertainment does not exactly come from this simplistic gameplay loop that can understandably get old or frustrating when not witnessing new events and getting stuck in loops or seeing the same scenes again and again; it comes from exploring the scenes for what they have to offer and taking in the bizarre tone, atmosphere and sense of humor present in the wrong button choices in each scenario. It ranges from basic cartoonish humor, and something not unlike Terry Gilliam's humor found in the animated sections of Monty Python, to things that are downright genuinely surreal and odd. In this way Panic!'s greatest strength is its pure, raw creativity. It can be dumb, it can hit or miss, it can be really weird and downright nonsense, but it makes for an unforgettable experience that, if you can appreciate it, is incredibly creative and ridiculously fun. Genuinely one of my favorite and most entertaining experiences with this entire medium simply for how genuinely creative and strange it is.
Panic!'s "gameplay" is quite literally just pushing buttons. You end up in a scenario, you have a choice of buttons to choose from a interface for that scene, you press one, something happens, and if you press the right one you move on the next scenario (of which the connection with the one you just came from is dubious at best). There's different amounts of buttons for each scene ranging from just 2 or 3 for a few, to over a dozen rarely in some cases. Also there are multiple different scenarios that are possible outcomes of progression in some scenes, so there's a sort of tiered branching tree and navigating to the end through the tree with your button presses is the goal. In theory you could maybe get insanely lucky and pick the right button every time and the game would simply be pushing buttons through loosely connected weird settings to the very end with nothing very entertaining at all except the art and opening/closing scenes of the story.
The real "substance" of Panic! comes from pushing the wrong buttons. When you push a button that doesn't result in you progressing onward to another scene, usually some event happens, then you're taken back to the button interface you were just at. So some levels can become a process of elimination (or you push all the wrong buttons intentionally to see what each scenario has to offer). 90% of the "wrong" button events do something with the scenario you're currently in;. Let's use an example of a scene of a group of buttons for some reason hooked up to a T-rex skeleton in a museum; one button can have the skeleton try to eat you, another might make it do a goofy dance, another might have a bigger skeleton chase the T-rex off or the like. Two more rare possibilities exist in specific scenes as well. One of these seems like you're going to progress but instead you cut to a scene where you get some really odd one liner from one of the very bizarre NPCs that inhabit the game's strange world, then back your buttons as before. Another are boobytrapped buttons which are very rare and present in only a fraction of the games total scenarios, that for some reason cause the destruction of a real world monument in the game like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben or something. I can't fathom why this happens, but it does, so you can either try to avoid them, or collect all acts of terrorism which the handily game tracks for you! Then there are also some choice that progress you sideways or backwards along the tree of scenes and even some sections you can end up in loops. So the fun of the game is actually navigating back and forth through this labyrinth of scenarios with your button presses and seeing what weirdness the game has to offer.
The greatest strength of the game's value as entertainment does not exactly come from this simplistic gameplay loop that can understandably get old or frustrating when not witnessing new events and getting stuck in loops or seeing the same scenes again and again; it comes from exploring the scenes for what they have to offer and taking in the bizarre tone, atmosphere and sense of humor present in the wrong button choices in each scenario. It ranges from basic cartoonish humor, and something not unlike Terry Gilliam's humor found in the animated sections of Monty Python, to things that are downright genuinely surreal and odd. In this way Panic!'s greatest strength is its pure, raw creativity. It can be dumb, it can hit or miss, it can be really weird and downright nonsense, but it makes for an unforgettable experience that, if you can appreciate it, is incredibly creative and ridiculously fun. Genuinely one of my favorite and most entertaining experiences with this entire medium simply for how genuinely creative and strange it is.