"It is the first time a fragrance has featured in a game as a playable character"

Paco Rabanne describe the robot-shaped bottle for their new fragrance, Phantom, as "your new wingman." The advert shows this in action, with the robot floating through a party, its behaviour on a spectrum somewhere between a '90s dancing baby meme and a horny BB-8.

This same screwtop fuckboi can now be your wingman in Curved Space, a twin-stick shmup of no particular note. "It is the first time a fragrance has featured in a game as a playable character" is a line from the press release. I love it, I hate it.

Here's a trailer for the free DLC/product placement:

Question: they say this is a playable character, but is it? He looks more like an NPC that follows you around and while I guess you direct him towards enemies, that's not the same as him being "playable". This is, of course, beside the point.

Curved Space came out on Steam back in June. It currently has 10 reviews on Steam, suggesting its sales have not been stellar. Still, Paco Rabanne have seen fit to partner with the game, so now you can send a perfume bottle out to fight interdimensional bugs on its small, rounded levels.

I appreciate that, by pointing out the absurdity of this partnership, I am also giving everyone involved the attention they crave. I'm sorry, but I cannot keep this one to myself. If by their twisted metrics this means that the campaign has succeeded, then so be it. Let the games industry flood with rampaging perfume. Let the shmup lovers smell like the fucky robot.

In fact, I say we should work this in the opposite direction. What other deployable weapons would you enjoy smelling like? Phantom allegedly has "notes of addictive creamy lavender, energizing fusing lemon and sexy woody vanilla." I reckon a Half-Life 2 manhack probably smells of ashes, just as the G-Man was talking about, but, like, really arousing and frothy ashes?