The Banshees of Inisherin gets transformed into a retro browser game

Flee from 8-bit Colin Farrell

The Oscars celebration may be over, but The Banshees of Inisherin live on in video game form. Over on this site, you can play Banshees: The Game, a pixel-y game based on the Academy Award-nominated film.

Created by Cogs & Marvel, this little retro-style game does indeed take after The Banshees of Inisherin. It’s got some lovely pixel work, including great illustrations of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.

How exactly does it play? Well, it’s basically Pac-Man. And that leads me to my first big point: for full disclosure, I have not seen this film. I’m only vaguely aware of The Banshees of Inisherin, mostly in that it stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, is a bit of a dark comedy, and is set on a fictional Irish isle. It’s also, as I’ve learned in the course of writing this article, from the same star pairing and director (Martin McDonagh) that created In Bruges, which has certainly piqued my interest.

That unfamiliarity did not help when I found that this video game is essentially Pac-Man, but with Brendan Gleeson’s character steadily picking up fingers before heading to the pub. Certainly a far cry from little dots and cherries.

Yeah, I’ve got no clue. Now, at this juncture, I must assume that The Banshees of Inisherin is about Brendan Gleeson desperately trying to reclaim the fingers he needs to hold his pint at the pub, before Colin Farrell catches up to him.

As deeply relatable as that sentiment is, I’m sure folks who have actually seen and enjoyed this award-nominated film find some dark humor in this set-up. It’s certainly made me curious what it’s all about. And really, a Pac-Man clone where you pick up fingers isn’t even close to scraping the depths of movie-to-game adaptations. You can play Banshees: The Game yourself here.