Exhausted Man demo's physics fun satisfied me, an exhausted person
Big Mood
Isn't everything exhausting? Sorry, I didn't mean to tax you with having to think about an answer; I know you're exhausted too. And yet even I, a perpetually exhausted person, was glad to make the effort for the Exhausted Man demo in the Steam Next Fest. It is, like many modern comedy games, about completing tasks by controlling a weird figure with wonky physics—in this case, a man so tired he slithers along like a human slug. I smile every time this horrible slugman crawls up a wall.
Here we are, slumped on the floor, an exhausted man. Walking is too much. Standing is too much. And yet, he can't quite sleep. Too many things to do. So this prone man must somehow slither and slide around, propelling himself by bumping his bum up and down. Get him started and he'll continue sliding onwards until told otherwise, presumably too tired to think about stopping. Which makes it great when he hits a wall and OH he slides right on up the wall, and soon is slithering across the wall, and spinning his floppy body into a twirl.
Within this familiar framework of a wacky physics game, we have to perform tasks. Move this object somewhere, adjust your body that particular way, the usual sorts of things that are difficult to accomplish when you are a terrible slug of a man. I enjoyed it (aside from occasional bugs where objectives weren't listed correctly). It was nice. I had fun. The image of this slugman doing donuts on a wall with his limbs twisting around his body is very funny to me.
You can download Exhausted Man's Next Fest demo from Steam.
Exhausted Man is made by Chinese indie studio Candleman Games, who previously released a platformer Alice Bee quite liked, Candleman.