Rock, Paper, Shotgun

By Nathan Grayson on October 4th, 2012 at 10:00 am.

Here is an intensely silly thing. I imagine you’re aware of QWOP, the purposefully-impossible-to-control runner with its eyes on the prize and/or ground. Meanwhile, I’m relatively certain – given that you are presumably a resident of planet earth – that you know of the Olympics, that big throwy, runny, leapy, swimmy thing we humans do every couple years in an attempt to stave off the ever-looming threat of Zeus’ wrath. Well, Enviro-Bear developer Justin Smith has more or less combined them to form Realistic Summer Sports Simulator. It’s not a particularly “good” game in the traditional sense, but it tickled funny bones I never even knew I had.

Yep, that trailer’s pretty much the whole game. Unlike QWOP, RSSS’ control system is based around physics-based flinging instead of physics-based flailing, but they share the same soul of humiliating futility. There are 15 minigames total – including weight-lifting, gymnastics, swimming, and biking – and all of them somehow manage to work in the same control scheme. Also, RSSS lets you toss around pretty much anything – from coaches to horses to jet planes (all of which are involved for some reason) – so that only further adds to the hilarity.

RSSS is dumb. It’s also basically unwinnable – and a former iOS game to boot. But still, it’s good for some pretty serious giggles and, of course, it’s completely free. So why not give it a go? You’ll probably laugh, and you know what they say about laughter: it really is the best medicine (unless you have something that can be cured by real medicine).