A comic science fiction story, it follows detective Alias Node as he searches for a shapeshifting killer inside The Thirsty Tentacle, a fantastical bar on the planet Armpit VI.

The player assumes the role of Alias and uses his Empathy Telepathy power to live out the memories of eight of the bar's patrons, including an immobile plant, an insect with compound eyes and a blind alien who navigates by sound.

[2] The player points and clicks with a mouse cursor to navigate the game world, examine and manipulate the environment, look around and converse with non-player characters.

[10] The game had initially been pursued by other publishers, including Microsoft and Viacom New Media; the latter had offered to implement it with the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine license.

[11] Boffo selected Rocket Science in large part to collaborate with that company's co-founder Ron Cobb,[4] a concept artist whose previous design work had appeared in the Mos Eisley cantina in Star Wars.

[12] Other bonuses included Rocket Science's marketing power, which had attracted high-profile press coverage to its past titles,[11] and the publisher's promise to create 3D models for the game's alien characters.

[10] According to Boffo, Rocket Science sought The Space Bar as part of an effort to recover from its early years,[10][11] following a string of major commercial flops.

[8] Meretzky considered the result his furthest-ever push into nonlinear gameplay,[20] and later compared the solution to his design for Boffo's previous game Hodj 'n' Podj.

[21] However, like QuickTime VR and the Z-Vision engine of Zork Nemesis, Boffo Games chose to enable 360° panoramic scrolling of each environment the player visits.

[9] As Meretzky believed that "traditional 2D sprite-based animation wasn't suitable for much of what they wanted to accomplish," according to PC Gamer US's Todd Vaughn, the team opted to pre-render the game's graphics.

"[22] Boffo relied on out-of-house subcontractors for The Space Bar's graphics, including Dub Media,[8] which had produced the 3D visuals for the developer's canceled Reverse Alien game.

[8] Mike Dornbrook, discussing the decision to choose Rocket Science for The Space Bar, said in 1998 that he believed "Steve was right about what Ron could contribute to the game".

[23] According to Dornbrook, the budgeting scheme to develop the engine was split across "at least" two games, a gamble that Boffo felt was viable because of its number of simultaneous projects.

[11] Company co-founder Peter Barrett exited the publisher, which then underwent corporate restructuring in February: new hires included Bill Davis of Sierra On-Line, who became the vice president of product development.

According to Bill Davis, the titles represented a push toward greater interactivity in the publisher's catalog;[27] this broke with its earlier reliance on full-motion video.

[8] Additions to The Space Bar's script were made throughout development,[9] including a significant portion in the beta test phase, for which the team was unable to record new voice-over.

"[9] Rocket Science demonstrated The Space Bar alongside Obsidian at the mid-1996 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3);[28] Peter Smith of Computer Games Strategy Plus wrote that the two titles "made a big splash" at the show.

[29] However, Meretzky later told Gamasutra, "With typical Boffo luck, they [Rocket Science] ran out of money halfway through the project and sold our game to SegaSoft.

[34] Estimated in PC Gamer US's September 1996 issue as three-fourths complete and on track for October,[17] The Space Bar ultimately missed Christmas, alongside Obsidian.

[35][36] In reaction, SegaSoft split with Rocket Science in early April 1997 and the developer entered a financial downward spiral,[36][37] closing later that month.

The game was finished months before it shipped;[38] Mike Dornbrook said development concluded in early 1997, but issues at SegaSoft regarding marketing delayed its release for half a year.

[11] Gamasutra's Frank Cifaldi noted that SegaSoft had begun to pivot to "online ventures such as the ill-fated Heat.net", and was uninterested in heavily pushing The Space Bar.

[38] SegaSoft similarly scrapped Boffo's plan to run a "hint line" for The Space Bar, according to Meretzky, who believed that this hurt its accessibility for players.

[44] PC Gamer US writer Allen Rausch hailed The Space Bar as a return to form for its genre, which combined the high points of interactive fiction with the strengths of modern graphic adventures.

[15] Conversely, Scorpia of Computer Gaming World wrote that The Space Bar "just misses the mark" and is recommendable mostly to players "with a high tolerance for frustration.

"[6] While Rausch and Scorpia agreed on the game's high difficulty and reliance on trial and error gameplay, she considered both the result of poor puzzle design.

[6][15] She also criticized the time limit and lack of traditional detective gameplay, and called The Space Bar's comedy strained and inferior to that of Superhero League of Hoboken, despite "some genuinely humorous touches".

[5] As with Brenesal, Rausch and Scorpia,[15][6][7] she noted the game's high level of difficulty: "Meretzky has constructed the most devious set of puzzles you're likely to encounter anywhere (with few exceptions)", Yans wrote.

[5][6][15] Steve Smith of GameSpot called The Space Bar's humor "tedious" and immature, and its art direction "uninspired and bland", despite Cobb's involvement.

[11] Meretzky noted that a failed project with MGM Interactive that year ultimately ended the company: the publisher requested several redesigns and platform changes, before canceling the game outright.