over the last week or so, i’ve been fairly obsessed with nitroglycerine!, a game by first-time developer avoidance. nitroglycerine! is at least partially based on william friedkin‘s sorcerer, which is often considered one of the greatest films of all time. this may sound like a bit of a moonshot for a young studio, but nitroglycerine! manages to be an immensely competent entry in the burgeoning genre of challenging, physics-based rage games in spite of its unattainable ambitions.

fresh off the successes of 1971’s the french connection and 1973’s the exorcist, friedkin set his sights on adapting french author georges arnaud‘s 1950 novel le salaire de la peur. this culminated in the 1977 release of sorcerer, a taut thriller about a group of expatriates who take on the suicidal task of transporting boxes of unstable, nitroglycerin-weeping dynamite through the jungles of an unspecified latin american country.

despite a more favorable reception from modern-day audiences, sorcerer was considered a critical and box office bomb at the time of its release, scaring the film’s distributors into heavily altering it for international audiences. veteran film editor jim clark was chosen to head this project, which largely amounted to removing the lengthy series of opening vignettes introducing sorcerer‘s protagonists and “shoehorning” — the exact word clark himself used to describe the process in his 2011 autobiography dream repairman — them into the rest of the movie as flashbacks.

“i have been informed by [cinema international corporation] that the film previously titled “the sorcerer” produced and directed by me and starring roy scheider has been extensively re-edited for its world wide release outside of the u.s. and canada,” friedkin told variety in 1978. “the changes significantly altered the film to the point that i now consider it a mutilated version. i have indicated to cic my strong objections to the film being released in this form so that it is no longer representative of the film i have made.”

the notoriously prickly friedkin would probably have hated nitroglycerine! for similar reasons.

much like in sorcerer, the main characters of nitroglycerine! take on the dangerous assignment of transporting highly explosive materials as a last-ditch effort to earn enough money to escape their circumstances. this, however, is relayed through a brief intro cinematic and quickly forgotten. nitroglycerine! treats its three protagonists as mere ciphers for the three-life limit it imposes on the player. if anything, the drivers act more as additional hindrances than fully fleshed-out characters; wrecking their trucks leaves fiery piles of rubble through which subsequent attempts must navigate just as carefully as the game’s environmental obstacles.

but i’m getting ahead of myself. nitroglycerine! is a sort of driving simulator by way of getting over it with bennett foddy. you’re given the choice between three different, heavy-duty pickup trucks, all of which are loaded with loose crates of highly explosive materials and drive like shit. take a turn too sharp or brake too hard, and the box is liable to hit the sides of the truck bed and explode (the guys in sorcerer at least had the wherewithal to pack their dangerous parcels in piles of sand to reduce sliding). the route from the game’s starting point in a small village to the hydroelectric dam awaiting your cargo is fraught with steep hills, winding turns, and terrible bridges. a sign near one such structure designates the overpass as the “sorcerer’s bridge,” the most direct callback to the movie nitroglycerine! uses as inspiration.

while nitroglycerine! is more than happy to lean into its B movie vibes — a frame narrative establishes the whole adventure as playing out via a vhs rental of the same name and the main menu resembles the outside of a rundown cineplex — it punches above its weight by nailing the small details. the audio design is subtle yet top notch, flavoring every moment with the rich texture of squealing brakepads, straining ropes, and crumbling terrain. the boxes of explosives show wear and tear in lieu of a more traditional health bar, with the final stage before imminent detonation allowing the lid to come free and expose several bottles of the eponymous danger liquid. i also can’t help but love the game’s use of an alternate take from the famous wilhelm scream recording sessions when you finally bite the bullet.

nitroglycerine! was quite the undertaking. if you had told me just a week ago a developer was planning to adapt sorcerer into a video game, i would have laughed in your face. it’s the kind of arrogance one can only attribute to stupidity. avoidance, however, have proven that hypothetical past me wrong. rather than try to create a 1:1 remake of one of the greatest films of all time, the studio instead remixed sorcerer‘s most compelling aspects into an experience that plays to the strengths of the medium. rarely do you see a game in this genre take such care to built not only a challenge you want to try over and over again but a world that feels vibrant and alive. watch sorcerer, play nitroglycerine!, and pour one out for william friedkin.