Shit Game is another surrealistic platform game in the tradition of Psychosomnium, some Knytt mods, Game Game Game and Game Again, or Mindscape. The title comes from a self-aware amateurishness, the hand drawn graphics, the midi-fied top-20 singles form the 90s, the sloppy collision detection mechanics. The sloppiness is part of the charm, this isn't just another game where you push the left and right arrow keys to move and shift to jump, this is an exploration of shit, the shit that lies within us all.
First of all, you gotta note the illustration. It's almost like you're in the mind of an eleven-year-old raised on Ren and Stimpy, the victim of weapons purposely designed to reign in a docile populace. The sound track comes second, this is significant for a lot of us because we (people belonging to the age group that amateur game developers predominantly belong to) were eleven-yeasr-old, Ren/Stimpy raised kids when these songs were on the radio, "Don't Speak" by No Doubt and a few others that are a clear departure from the usual hard rock anthems accompanying high-fructose action. Another thing that struck me about the sound track was that it reminded me of Virginia Tech Rampage, I don't know about you. The foot is the crushing hoof of authority repressing your mind, the panicked, psychotic floating head is the general psychosis of the population. The planes crashing into the ground at a familiar tilt and angle aren't too hard to place in this context -- fucking 9-11. That collision detection is so fuzzy, you can jump under a platform or on the side and scoot right along, suggesting a world where boundaries are only enforced by our assumptions of their solidity. The cyborg-ish eyepatch covering the right-skull is a harbinger of the B-CIs we'll all be getting in a couple of years. The ending music a sad remembrance of the dying lover we call America.
Am I reading too much into this?
It's a shit game.
