The Average Gamer

Indie Rock: The Salt Pleeease

The Salt Please wideIf I’d actually studied Anthropology at University, in a greater sense than spending three years in bars figuring out how to get people to deep kiss with me on the mouth, I’d have tried to pinpoint how the eccentricities of sitting down to eat food developed from culture to culture. I’m fascinated by, say, theories of why smashing ceramics became a thing in Greece or when I’m reading literally any sentence about etiquette on the wikipedia page for chopsticks.

Obviously culture around food in groups began based on the ingredients most readily available, but then almost as an evolutionary process we kept deciding different rules for what was permitted based on a shared understanding of events that came before, some of these events might have happened 100 years before anyone on the table was ever born.

The Salt Pleease is about not being able to grab the salt yourself because you aren’t allowed, for some reason. I mean that in real life and not the game. In real life you’re have to ask for it to be passed to you. In the game you’re actually unable to grab it yourself because your arms are rigidly stuck in place.

Everyone at the table has a massive arm that can be extended forward or backward based on movement of the mouse. They huddle around a square table and as the mouse moves it controls the hands of everyone at once. Clicking will cause everyone’s hands to grasp. Someone around the table will ask for the blue shaker of salt (or another item entirely later on) and so it’s your job to navigate the mess of writhing hands and get it over to them in increasingly obfuscated paths.

The Salt Please 2Look, I have a thing for unrealistic body proportions, alright?

That Edward Gorey-style art! It sells that everyone is having an awful time eating gross food. Of course they need salt. They’re after anything easily accessible that’ll cover up the worst thing they’ve ever eaten! It’s all wrapped up in these victorian times rigid manners where presumably if these kids don’t abide the rules then they’re going to get a cane to their massive elongated knuckles.

Eventually there’s a limit to have far the limbs can move and how far away the salt is, so you’re basically passing it around the entire level clockwise when the person who wants it is sitting right next to you.

It’s fun. It’s a short little thing you’ll enjoy. Maybe play it!