Failman
People like to joke about how some superheroes actually make things worse, but for Failman, star of PPLLAAYY's short and very silly point-and-click puzzle game, anything worth doing is worth doing in a way that makes everyone around him completely miserable. Each small level has a superhero-type problem, such as a bank robbery, and it's your job to figure out what to click, and in what order, to, ehhhh, save the day... sort of. Though on the (very) easy side, Failman's cheeky sense of humour and deliberately absurd style makes us hope we see a bigger adventure in the future.
Kind of reminds me of Stupidella. Maybe it's done by the same person.
Do you realize that the cars are driving on the left side of the street?
Man, this game is so Tumblr it hurts.
It's not really a game, is it? It's a point and click comic (and not a bad one) but there's not much puzzle-solving or effort on the play side.
I didn't really have a problem with the interactive comic book-y approach.
This was pleasant and entertaining, which I guess is more than can be said of a few "game-ier" games I've played.
That said, my only real criticism was
the inconsistency of the character of Failman himself: most of the time, he tried to do something good and the result was horrible (which was really endearing and funny) but once in a while he would act in a way that was purposely "evil" (not endearing, not funny).
I like unlikable characters and antiheroes, but I felt like this inconsistency just made the game jarring in a bad way. Acting villainous on purpose seems to be opposite of Failman's moniker as "the man who fails," not because he's being evil, but because he's succeeding at being evil. If he truly was Failman, it'd make more sense if his attempts at being evil were also thwarted by failure in the form of "good" outcomes.
Then again, a game like this isn't really built on nuance. Also is tumblr filled with morally ambiguous superheroes now? I swear every year I get more and more out of the loop.
Update