Welcome to Alt+Escape, our weekly pick of browser-based games to help you start your weekend a little early. Check back each Friday for a new game!
[folder_nav]Spewer
Edmund McMillen is the artist and designer behind some of the most delightfully inventive Flash games on the web, including Aether, Meat Boy, Tri-achnid and Coil. He’s also the brains (and balls) behind the insanely controversial The C Word, a game that I can’t even link to without attracting some unwanted attention from my superiors. Needless to say, his oeuvre spans the gamut from thought-provoking to simply provocative, tasteful to tasteless.
Spewer falls somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. Yes, it’s a game about puking. But it’s also about growing, about learning your purpose in life, about self-actualization. Across Spewer‘s 50-plus levels, you’ll learn to harness your powers of emesis to navigate the obstacles placed before you. You’ll also swim through pools of your vomit to cross razor-filled chasms and propel yourself with barf like a gastrointestinal jet pack. In all, there are five distinct phases of Spewer, each with its own puke-tastic game mechanic.
Spewer‘s liquid physics can be a little processor intensive – I noticed it chug a few times while playing on my MacBook – but if you’re having trouble playing it in your browser, you can download a client for free here. When you’re finished with the game’s story mode, you can hop into the surprisingly robust level editor and expel some creative juices of your own. Just make sure to mop up when you’re finished.
Published: May 8, 2009 05:00 pm