Grade: B+
Why do elephants paint their balls red? So they can hide in cherry trees, of course. The principle behind this playground joke is the animating principle of the brand-new online indie game currently going viral among the under-15s. Finger on the pulse, me. Actually, I only know about this game because my 12-year-old son Jonah started begging to be allowed to download it, which made a pleasant change from begging to be allowed to download Fortnite.
Basically, it’s multiplayer hide-and-seek but with paint. You know it’s one of those games kids like because the lobbies have that jittery Roblox/Gorilla Tag vibe – all migraineous colour-clashes and old-school neon gamertags. When you teleport in-game you’ll find yourself in a biggish arena full of posters and pipework and brickwork and random objects, most of them stripy or spotty or patterned. If you’re a hider, you get a couple of minutes to take a position (under the eaves of this roof? Beside this giant spinning top? Against this corrugated iron wall?), make your featureless Morph-style stick-man strike one of half a dozen pre-set poses (YMCA dancer? Dab? Foetal whimper?) and then paint him to blend in with the background.
Then, whoop whoop, the timer goes and the hunt is on. The hunters amble about with paint-guns in first-person-shooter mode. When one spots you, they tag you with a splat paint and you’re found. You join the hunters. Last person to be found wins. And then you go again. For hours, it seems. It’s pretty wholesome and it’s less than a tenner on Steam. If you’re 12, you will absolutely love it. Oh. That high-pitched wailing sound? That’s giraffes eating cherries.
Comments