Pippin Barr, About, Games, Books, Podcast, Video,
You can do it Sssisssyphusss! Be the boulder! Keep on rollin’! Don’t ssstop! Never give up! No retreat! No sssurrender! No end in sssight! Just deliciousss Greek torment asss far asss the eye can sssee and asss fassst asss the fingersss can type!
Shadows! Flickering shadows! With hard edges! Or soft! Baked or realtime! Moving with the sun! Growing in intensity! Gold gleaming in their darkness!
Let’s make a game! Let’s think about making a game! A game about making games! Let’s play a Choose Your Own Adventure about making a game about games where you’re me! I’m not confused! Neither are we!
So you made a videogame that hid the things you were trying to exhibit?! Had some doubts but released it anyway?! Now you’re trying to crawl back in with a different version that lets the audience see the Unity GameObject menu brought to life?! No, wait, that’s me! Enjoy it if you can!
Nothing feels quite as good as filling out forms! Am I right?! Choose any pen you want and get to it! Check boxes! Sign your name! Calculate numbers! Sigh loudly and scratch your neck! It’s all the action of the non-digital office environment in the discomfort of your own home!
Are games art?! This one definitely is! The Artist is Present is a Sierra-style recreation of the famed performance piece of the same name by artist Marina Abramovic at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Have the experience only a lucky few have ever had! Stare into Marina Abramovic’s eyes! Make of it what you will! Just like art!
Make sounds! Are they music?! Who even knows what music is these days?! And what would John Cage say?! Maybe he’d just be silent and let the universe speak for him! Zing!
They know what we did. What do we do now?
Won’t someone think of the children!? They need food! They need play! They need not to drown! They need not to be electrocuted! Do something for crying out loud! Jostle them!
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy! All work and no pllay makes Jack a dull boy! All work and no play makes Jaca dyll boy! All work and no play makes Jack a dullboy! All work and no plaay makes Jack a dull boy!
You can do it Sisyphus! Be the boulder! Keep on rollin’! Don’t stop! Never give up! No retreat! No surrender! No end in sight! Just delicious Greek torment as far as the eye can see and as fast as the fingers can type!
Bip! Bip! Bip! Boop! Everyone loves PONG! So everyone loves thirty six PONGS even more! Work those learning muscles with EDUTAINMENT PONG! Get serious with SERIOUS PONG! Shoot a laser gun in LASER PONG! Play PONG in PONG PONG! And many more!
A game to solve all your life’s problems with! Consult the guru on any matter your heart desires and let him bestow wisdom upon you! Relive the Golden Age of text adventures! Beat the guru at his own game! So to speak!
Nothing to see here! But don’t move along! You can really see the nothing here! Examine the nothing! Think about the nothing! The nothing is where it all begins!
Sure, great works of cinema are great! But aren’t they missing something?! Yes! They’re missing tanks! Move over Orson Welles! Move over Robert DiNiro! These tanks are ready for their close-up!
How much chess would a chess guy chess if a chess guy would chess chess?! Eight more chess variations hot and chessy out of the chess oven! Chess ‘em up!
There are 1.8446744e+19 possible 8x8 one bit images! But only some of them look like water! Here are 24 of them! Hand crafted, refreshing water! Everywhere! But not a drop to drink!
You’ve chessed! You’ve chessesed! But have you chesses2ed?! You haven’t?! Game on! Peer through the fog of war! Go through the cycle of death and rebirth! Experience the hottest new XR app in town!
It’s happening! Again! The Artist Is Present! You are present! The artist is you! Put on your red dress and sit in the famous chair! Lock eyes with your audience! Be there now!
> get punishment
Fly like an eagle! Climb every mountain! Reach for the stars! I mean apple! Empty your opponent’s bathtub just before they get in!
It’s pushing! It’s running! It’s reaching! It’s suffering! It’s five ancient greek punishments for the effort of one! It’s everything!
Your pieces slide! Your pieces fall! Your pieces do the strangest things! It’s chesses unlike the chess you normally chess! Bet you can’t chess just one!
The boulder is practically square! The apple is barely recognisable! Yet you push! Yet you reach! Yet you strain! Yet you weep! Punishment knows no minimum resolution!
Hypertext! Hyperpunishment! Click links while your heart sinks! Read texts and repent your defects! Enjoy the Twine! Your soul’s on the line!
e4! e5! Nf3! Nc6! White knight captures black pawn! Black knight attacks white knight for 2HP of damage! White knight misses black knight! What the hell is going on?!
Chess! It already feels like a punishment to so many people! But now even more so! What if Zeus threw chess sets instead of lightning bolts?! What if Archimedes was a vengeful god?! What if you just kept getting chessed for eternity?!
Type! Type the boulder up the hill! Type the eagle away from your liver! Type, damn you! It’s Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing in the depths of Hades! Feel the burn of your repetitive strain injuries!
Sliders! Radio buttons! Dialog boxes! Menus! Progress bars! These are the instruments of our eternal contemporary torment! The ancient Greek gods would have approved! We are all Sisyphus now!
Torment characters from Greek mythology! Forever! Push Sisyphus back down the hill! Peck out Prometheus’s liver! Withhold the apple from Tantalus! Albert Camus said we must imagine Sisyphus happy! So the boulder must be even happier! Right?!
Physical intimacy is a thing of the past! Finally! But wait! Why do you feel so alone?! You want to touch someone?! Make them feel good?! But you don’t really want to actually have to touch someone?! You don’t really want to deal with another human?! Well you’re in luck! With this new application it is as if you were making love!
A room! A trunk! A tube! A bed! A radiator! A light! A landscape! A darkness! A separation! A floating in air! A doubling! An intersection! And more! And more!
Tanks shooting tanks! The tanks are upside down now?! Tank on tank action! Why is that cactus floating into the sky?! Shoot that tank! The sky seems to be green?! The shadows have all vanished?! That tank just drove down through the ground?! That oil derrick grew to three times its original size?! What is this, some kind of completely artificial videogame world?!
Sssnakes can do anything! Sssubdue colossssssi! Ssstamp passssssportsss! Sssweep minesss! Ssscore goalsss! Ssstop missssssiles! Circumvent ghossstsss! Ssswwoop through World 1-1! Go sssnakesss!
The robots are here! No more work! It’s great! Is it great?! Wait! You feel apathetic and unproductive! You miss clicking buttons! You miss waiting for progress bars! You miss checkboxes! You miss work! But it’s going to be okay! Use this handy application and it is as if you were doing work!
Watch the computer struggle against the chains it put itself in! Watch the computer try to drink the water it moves out of reach! Watch the computer push a rock up a hill and knock it down again! In a joyful infinite loop! One must imagine CPU Sisyphus happy!
Life is meaningless! Maybe you need some kind of ism to attempt to ward off the inevitable and unavoidable despair! Here, have some isms made of snakes! Life is still meaningless but now you have a bunch of snakes as well! Thank me later!
Snow, but made of text! Rooms, but made of text! Stairs, but made of text! An elevator, but made of text! You’ll probably die, but made of text! These fragments I have shored against my ruins!
You’ve always wanted to be a chess master! But you aren’t one! Are you! Now you can at least look like one! Pretend you’re playing chess! Make moves! Act like you feel things! Smirk! Frown! Weep! Chess!
“Step into my magic circle!” Said the designer to the player! “There will be flow states! And narrative! And no ludology! Or no narrative and a lot of ludology! Whatever you prefer! It will be ergodic if not erotic! And it will be so immersive you just might drown in it!”
It’s Greek punishment! Again! Push a rock up a hill! Again! Try to drink the water! Again! Struggle against your chains! Again! It’s all the same! But everything is different!
There’s so much to see and do! But you can’t see it or do it! Grapple with videogame ontology! And epistemology! Perhaps you won’t see the point of any of this! I’m sorry! No I’m not!
A room! A trunk! A tube! A bed! A radiator! A light! A landscape! A darkness! A separation! A floating in air! A doubling! An intersection! And more! And more!
The sky is grey! The birds all flew! There’s no more trees for complaining to! The table’s turned! The rice is gone! The world is over, but the Method is strong!
There’s a great novelist inside all of us! Especially you! You just need to get started! Write! Read! Write-read! What is that?! Find out!
Independent games! Cloned! In a way! All the fun with none of the features! Hot topics! ‘Sex’! ‘Death’! ‘Art’! ‘Alternate Dimensions’! ‘Golf’! Bricks! Balls! Paddles! Breakout!
A series of gunshots.
What’s better than breaking out?! BREAKSING OUT! Breaks out to your heart’s content in these wonderful variants of your old family friend! Snake it up in SNAKEOUT! Feel the love in GHOST BREAKOUT! Experience the future of entertainment in BREAKOUT VR! Or have a meaningful cultural experience with РАЗРАЗИТЬСЯ!
You have always dreamed of your computer solving chess! Or your phone! The ultimate act of computation! Make a move! Sit back! Relax! Only the best for you! Very thorough! Very thoughtful! Good things take time!
When is an international sporting event symbolising European unity and goodwill not an international sporting event symbolising European unity and goodwill?! When you’ve been arbitrarily detained by the Azerbaijan government!
The decrepit chestnut strikes back! Games! Art! It’s an art gallery so it’s art! But there’s no art in it so it isn’t! But maybe that’s art so it is! But it’s a videogame so it isn’t’! But everything is different now so it is!
You want to break free! You want to! Break free! If a ball hits a brick in a game, does it make a noise?! Sure sounds like it!
It’s a game! In a painting! On a wall! In a gallery! In a game! Or something! Marvel as you once again confront that most boring question! Are games art?! Is art some kind of a damn game to you?!
You can have anything you want! All using the power of your mind! Romanov tried to hide it! But now you’ve got it! Don’t wait! MANIFEST your destiny today!
Get! Avoid! Avoid! Get! Get get avoid get! It’s the stunning culmination of every game you’ve ever played! You don’t have to like it but you can’t avoid it! Got it?!
Imagen Seinfeld was never canceled and still NBC comedy program today?! Could there be a webgame about the Junior Mint episode?! Could you play as Jerry or Kramer?! Yes! A thousand times yes!
At some point Meteor changed and this project died. See its info page for some documentation.
Who’s in the lead?! I am! No wait, you are! No wait who’s that guy?! What the hell, man! Catch up! Fall behind! Don’t even care! Be a true Leaderboarder!
Are you drowning right now?! Don’t do that! Or maybe you could just let yourself go! Slip beneath the waves! But no! Life is a struggle! You’ve just got to want it enough!
This is a Flash project and Flash has been discontinued. View the game's page for more information. Note that it does have some functionality in HTML5.
Are you ready for some Dick Fight?! An every night party! We got small and medium and big! We gonna get it dick started! Seriously though! Fight for your dick! Fight with your dick! Play with a friend! Knock their dick off! Or just play with yourself!
Work your depressing day job! Decorate your desk! Experience true apathy! But watch out for the twist! Maybe you’ll be all like, “Help me! Help me!”
Hut one! Hut two! Hut eleven! Hut whatever! Hut hut hut! It’s game time, kicker! Taste the incomparable flavours of glory and defeat! Even a tied game perhaps! Play as the kicker on an American football team! Get used to life on the sidelines, kid!
Daaaah! Dah dahdah dahdah-dah! Dah dahdah dahdah-dah! Daaaaaahdah daaaaaadah dah dah dah dah dah! Yes! Epic Sax Guy is now the star of his very own game! You, too, can live out the Epic Sax Life! Play your saxophone in a variety of settings! Practice in your room! Win Eurovision 2010! Win YouTube! Do it all!
Mavis Beacon Teaches Horrible Death In An Air Wreck! See if your fingers are fast enough to save yourself from the many grisly deaths available in the world of air travel. And learn something in the process! Like typing! And how to not die!
A God-game from another mother! Whatever that means! Take on the Big Job and decide whether to punish or forgive all the Sinners in the world! If you get sick of them, just flood the planet!