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"Johnny" by Kim Okkerstrom is the harrowing tale of a young lad named Johnny and his battles against cocaine addiction. Kim chose to use the (then) freeware game creation program Game Maker 5 to weave this dark tapestry, and his use of Game Maker, a program that was free and accessible to anyone, mirrors how Johnny's battle against his inner demons is not unique to him. Kim wants us all to get up and face our problems head-on, because if we do not, they will no doubt enslave us.

Join me now as I take control of young Johnny and journey into the deepest, darkest recesses of his teenage mind to face the addiction which rules his life...

I take my mouse and slowly move it over to the "johnny.exe" icon on my Desktop.

The use of contrasting red and white on the icon is pure genius. The icon seems to scream back at me with the raw, uncompromising severity of the subject matter at hand. "This is no mere game", it seems to say. "This is life or death for Johnny". The J in the center of the circle resembling a hook is no coincidence, either. Johnny is dangling from a figurative hook, hanging over a bottomless pit, and unless he does something now, sooner or later the frayed cloth by which he hangs will rip, and he will tumble down, down into the abyss. He will lie, steal, and even murder just to get the crack that he so needs. I am the only one who can save him from such a fate. I hold my breath and double-click. The doors swing open, and a rushing vortex sucks me in headfirst. This is it. No return.

Johnny starts on a grassy knoll, mirroring the false tranquillity of his current situation.

He is tempted to remain on the knoll, to not venture forth into the blackness, not jump on the precarious gray platforms ahead. It's the "just one more hit, and I'll be fine" mentality. But problems like this cannot be dealt with passively. I rudely shove away Lady Temptation and jump onto the first gray platform. The crack seems to have already taken its toll on Johnny's mechanics. I cannot move right or left in mid-air without moving slightly down at the same time. Thus, even if I am jumping up, as soon as I hit the dreaded right/left keys, Johnny's vertical direction inexplicably becomes earthward.

I fight on, past several such gray platforms, and soon encounter my first demon. It is Belial, the Worthless. His blazing red eyes shine in the blackness and would be enough to turn many a brave soul back, but I do not falter.

Perceiving my defiance, he begins to rain hellfire upon me, but I retaliate with the one true fire, the fire of freedom, freedom from addiction and oppression, freedom to choose and live one's life without being governed by external forces. I am shocked to find that the fire automatically shoots left unless I am moving right, which is the only situation in which it will actually shoot right. Another genius move on Okkerstrom's part. The man's depth of thought never ceases to amaze me. The left (wrong) path is always the easiest to take, Kim is telling us, but we must work and fight in order to maintain the right (right) path. With Kim's spirit empowering me, I manage to vanquish my vile foe by side-stepping back and forth on the platform. It is at this moment that I realize that Johnny, even when he is moving left, still maintains the sprite of him facing right. There is no looking back for him. The only way is forward.

The next room finds Johnny on a long straightaway. Hidden demons snarl and snap their jaws from the right side of the screen. Bravely I venture into the blackness. I can only see ~32 pixels in front of me, and I can feel my heart rate increasing with every step I take, as perspiration simultaneously streams from my brow. However, I reach the other side of the room unscathed. The demons know that the human mind has both strengths and weaknesses, and that fear of the unknown is one of its greatest faults. They chose to use it against young Johnny, but I pulled through... this time.

Red warning lights blind me as I enter the next room.

They blare at me to turn back, for my own good. But warnings are not for me. I knew what I was in for before I even began this journey. I am promptly assaulted by an unidentified variety of giant garlic clove. It cannot fire projectiles, and can only hurt me my direct contact. Its movement is quite unpredictable, but I manage to get past nonetheless. I ponder the situation for a moment.

Even ordinary seasonings have now become my foe. If all I know is turning against me, what is there left for me to hang on to? What comforting memory of reality will light my way through this dark struggle?

The next chamber houses the forces of Legion, lined up in battle array. They gnash their teeth, and emit hellfire which burns my eyes and my flesh. Young Johnny screams in pain but counters with the true fire. Slowly but surely, one by one, the demons fall, and Johnny struggles onward. There is a brief respite from the action as Johnny takes cover inside what seems to be a vague mirror image of his mother's pantry back in their home in the Alabama plains. He can clearly see the ever-familiar spice rack on the wall. Cloves lined up neatly on shelves, waiting to be added to the evening's beef stew...

With a start, Johnny realizes that the demons are playing with his mind once more: they want him to reminisce in memories of his innocent, drug-free past, they want him to let his guard down, as they creep ever closer and suddenly, when he least suspects it, lash out and engulf their unsuspecting prey. At least that's what would have happened, but Johnny and I hasten away from the harlequin spice rack before the cloves can attack.

The demons now play a different card. Instead of attacking Johnny directly, they decide to let his deteriorating sense of spatial relationships and even basic physical coordination do him in.

A series of moving gray platforms float amidst a sea of blue. There is no telling how far away the sanctuary of the other side of the room lies. A lack of a constant background also diminishes the ability to gauge one's progress through the room. Johnny must focus on the moment, which of course he finds very difficult due to his impaired movement, as well as the fact that the platforms seem to stop moving whenever he latches on to them. Johnny and I must fight through the treacherous environment platform by platform, step by step. More than once, Johnny's nose, with its insane length, helps me to grab on to the sides of platforms, saving me from plummeting down to certain doom.

After many such rooms and literally hundreds of jumps, some more successful than others, Johnny seems unable to go on. Time no longer has any meaning. He seems to exist in a void, a void of blue sky and gray, unstable earth. Suddenly, after wading though another nearly-identical room, our surroundings change again. The blackness has returned: the demons are back in force. We find ourselves mounted on one of the uppermost branches of what seems to be a demented, wisp-like version of the tree Johnny used to climb in his backyard when he was just a wee young lad.

Demons sit on the other branches, mocking us, their legs dangling. Johnny opens fire: the demons of Legion tumble earthward, but the dreaded garlic cloves cannot be taken down and must thus be navigated around.

Realizing that Johnny is a tougher nut to crack than he puts on, the demons throw all the hellish weaponry at their disposal against him. The blue sky and moving platforms are back, but so are the demons. I will not go into how many hours of blood, sweat and tears it takes for Johnny and I to navigate the dreaded room which follows. All that matters is, at the end of it all, Johnny knows he is unstoppable. He has faced his demons in their own arena of choice, he has fought all the forces they could possibly muster up, and he has still triumphed. What lies ahead no longer troubles him, and he struts into the next room with his nose held high.

And here he is, Satan himself, in the form of a massive turd with legs and a large red eye on a stalk.

Being the cunning bastard that he is, Satan is evidently attempting to prey on Johnny's lifelong fear of poop to try and prevent him from engaging in combat. For a split second, it seems that the Son of Perdition has been successful once more: Johnny quakes in his boots, and as the giant mass of fecal matter approaches, can only manage to let loose one or two blasts of true fire before he is trampled underfoot. But what is this? Johnny has respawned in the upper-left hand corner of the room! Evidently his spirit is so strong, his will to triumph over his addiction so resilient, that mere physical death cannot hold him back. The turd strikes again, and the cycle keeps repeating: Johnny resurrects, fires a couple of fireballs (all the while in near paralysis from his fear of poop), ends up getting smashed and stepped on beyond recognition, but always manages to resurrect again.

And finally, Satan is defeated. An endgame message from Okkerstrom the Overseer pops up, congratulating us on our hard-fought victory.

The black font on a whitish background, as simple as color schemes get, symbolizes a new beginning, a clear slate. Johnny has chased away the last of his drug demons, and now cocaine is no longer the enemy.

Now he just has to deal with that chick he got pregnant.