Hours of Quality Entertainment

September 13, 2011 5:21 PM

Flabby Physics!
posted by dunkadunc (33 comments total)

I haven't been this entertained by a game's background music since Clown Finder.
posted by phunniemee at 5:27 PM on September 13, 2011

If this game was supposed to be impossibly terrible, then I love it. If that was unintentional, then I hate it.
posted by DU at 5:27 PM on September 13, 2011

I'm so glad the link is not what I expected.
posted by Memo at 5:27 PM on September 13, 2011

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!
posted by TheCoug at 5:30 PM on September 13, 2011

That didn't last long. Need moar bouncy bubbles!
posted by phunniemee at 5:30 PM on September 13, 2011

Beat it.
posted by barrett caulk at 5:31 PM on September 13, 2011

I wonder how fast you'd have to be traveling for that be 'hours' of entertainment. I had fun while it lasted though.
posted by barrett caulk at 5:34 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is this like the Yellow Submarine version of Angry Birds?
posted by oonh at 5:46 PM on September 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

It was delightful until it got too hard.
posted by bleep at 5:59 PM on September 13, 2011 [4 favorites]

No music control? No thank you.
posted by SomaSoda at 6:03 PM on September 13, 2011

my money's on box2d
posted by victors at 6:06 PM on September 13, 2011

Clown Finder just gave me a plugin error. Now you will all find that I am a sad clown.
posted by davejay at 6:22 PM on September 13, 2011

I'm really really glad that the game ended because that's the kind of thing I sit down with the intent of clicking around for fun and the next thing I know it's 4AM and my contact lenses have the consistency of a Saltine cracker.
posted by Turkey Glue at 6:24 PM on September 13, 2011 [7 favorites]

Where's the easter egg where Homestar Runner pops out and goes "Dat was eeeeeeeasy!"?
posted by not_on_display at 6:25 PM on September 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

I was hoping this was an advancement in fat ragdoll physics.
posted by frenetic at 6:26 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

The molleindustria page for the game tells of it's origin:

Prime example of punk coding, Flabby Physics is a one-button minigame made for the GAMMA IV contest as a part of an elaborate ploy to get an extra free pass to the GDC. The game was rightfully rejected but I decided to publish it here as a cautionary tale about the dangers of fake soft-body dynamics.

The difficulty level and winnability of the game might be affected by your computer's performance and your screen resolution.

His game Phone Story was banned from the app store today. Most of his other (possibly nsfw) games have a political bent to them as well.
posted by Gary at 6:27 PM on September 13, 2011 [5 favorites]

Kotaku has a video of Phone Story.
posted by Gary at 6:35 PM on September 13, 2011

I really, really, really liked the game Lemmings (on Sega Game Gear, with the nerdy magnifying lense). This was like a really, really simplified version of that.
posted by shortyJBot at 6:53 PM on September 13, 2011

Lemmings! More Lemmings!
posted by phunniemee at 7:02 PM on September 13, 2011

(Wait, this is the Phone Story guy? That's the real FPP here...)
posted by victors at 7:02 PM on September 13, 2011 [3 favorites]

Turning someone's tragedy into a game to draw attention to the tragedy is a bit of a fail if you ask me. The Phone Story story makes the people with a cause seem like assholes even if it's a good cause.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:08 PM on September 13, 2011

Turning someone's tragedy into a game

Well, that's not a very generous way to look at it - video gaming is as valid a platform for protest as a play, cartoon or anything else, no?
posted by victors at 7:46 PM on September 13, 2011

For me, it was like a minute and a half of quality entertainment. Great concept, great music, but the learning/mastery curve was way too steep. It went from amusing/light/charming to frustrating-as-fucking-hell in the space of a couple of levels.
posted by treepour at 9:40 PM on September 13, 2011

I liked it until I started picturing the blogs as cartoon fetuses.
posted by auto-correct at 9:47 PM on September 13, 2011

... and the I LOVED it.
posted by auto-correct at 9:47 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

cjorgensen: “Turning someone's tragedy into a game to draw attention to the tragedy is a bit of a fail if you ask me. The Phone Story story makes the people with a cause seem like assholes even if it's a good cause.”

I don't think you quite understand how it works. It's not really a game at all; at least, the point isn't in the playing of it. It's an app that demands that you poke the screen periodically while it delivers a long lecture to you about how iPhones are destroying people's lives all over the world. If you stop poking, it tells you: "don't pretend you're not complicit!" and reminds you that you bought the phone.

It isn't actually fun at all, and nobody is going to idly while away hours on the bus playing this thing. It's basically the game equivalent of those commercials with pictures of starving children, though it has a bit more humor to it I suppose. In any case, it's not pleasant. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to drive home a point.

Anyway, it's worth watching that video that someone linked above.
posted by koeselitz at 10:28 PM on September 13, 2011

It isn't actually fun at all, and nobody is going to idly while away hours on the bus playing this thing. It's basically the game equivalent of those commercials with pictures of starving children, though it has a bit more humor to it I suppose. In any case, it's not pleasant. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to drive home a point.

Well the game parts are parodies of serious things that exist in real life, and a parody of something tragic will tend to be seen as offensive. Not to say that being offensive is necessarily wrong, there is a long history of using offensive material in satire in effective ways. But if say, you do an activist game about rape and it involves a cartoon parody of a woman being raped, that's going to offend some people, and I think things like the parody of factory worker suicides in the game have a similar effect. So yes it's clearly not supposed to be pleasant or fun, but to me it comes off as more condescending and glib about the issues involved than they probably were aiming for.
posted by burnmp3s at 6:30 AM on September 14, 2011

it comes off as more condescending and glib about the issues involved than they probably were aiming for

A Hungarian painter friend used to complain that Soviet-era underground message art was effective at neither 'message' nor 'art'

We can call this instance too on the nose, or earnest or otherwise heavy handed but that doesn't preclude the media of video gaming ("turning this into a game") from being an effective delivery mechanism - perhaps in the hands of someone with a "lighter" touch.
posted by victors at 6:50 AM on September 14, 2011

Lemmings! More Lemmings!

I officially hate you, phunniemee.
posted by Kimberly at 9:20 AM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

That game makes my space bar seem louder.
posted by Kale Slayer at 10:19 AM on September 14, 2011

[By which I mean, I was planning on getting stuff done today and now that's ruined!]
posted by Kimberly at 10:23 AM on September 14, 2011

Way too hard for me.
posted by Decani at 10:57 AM on September 14, 2011

QWOP: Peristalsis Edition
posted by Rhaomi at 8:09 PM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]