Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist

Planned Parenthood sure made a strange choice of developer to do their advergame supporting awareness of abortion services. I could imagine Persuasive Games doing something a bit low-key, or maybe some more blase company doing an economic game that reinforces the value of Planned Parenthood's clinics and counseling. But choosing Messhof, creator of You Found The Grappling Hook and FlyWrench, that was a risky move. The result is the most bizarre advergame ever created, one that doesn't seem to particularly touch on any issues directly related to abortion, much less municipality.

What I like about this game is: it is what it is. That's the least pretentious thing I can say in praise of it. The whole thing just reeks of existential belligerence, like a review that strings a few big words too many. First you gotta look at the name. Randy Balma makes you think of some psuedo-professional operating in Miami, wearing clothes that went out in the 80s and subsisting on poor-quality cocaine. Then you have the role of abortionist, making you think that you're about to play a game about this character in that role. The qualifier of "municipal" is the key touch, the crystal on the keef, the glaze that gives the donut its unhealthy allure. What could be so municipal about this abortionist? Here I think, is the confused and obscured legacy of the deal, undeniably gone wrong, that launched this game in the first place. Note that Planned Parenthood has removed any signs from the intro.

The gameplay is a string of genre mini-games that intentionally subvert mechanics in order to fuck with your head, like some of Cactus's games, but with a gratuitous use of rainbow-colored explosion paint. And when it ends, you feel bemused, ambivalent with a slight net-positive in favor of a good impression; like if you were getting your memory erased by one of those machines from Eternal Sunshine while having the best sex of your life and getting a root canal, simultaneously. The math to back up this metaphor would fill pages and boil down to a single decimal, much like the experience of the game itself.