Octodad

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Octodad is a 3rd-person “action” game. The action is in quotes because it consists of things like “mop the floor” and “clean out the fridge”. Sound simple? It is. Except for one small detail: You’re an octopus.

Octodad revolves around an octopus pretending to be a husband and father long enough to complete a dummy of himself so he can slither off to the basement to complete his “important work.” But you don’t use standard platformer controls like so many games these days. You’re pretending to be a human, which means trying to approximate human actions with a squishy octopus body.

You have two modes, “hands” mode and “feet” mode. In “feet” mode, you have to manually move each foot to walk about, while still managing your flexible and wiggly upper body. The left mouse button controls the left foot, and the right mouse button controls the right foot. You click the mouse button to raise the foot, move the mouse to move the foot around, and release the mouse button to place the foot back down.

In “hands” mode, you use a tentacle to grab objects around the house. You move the mouse to move the arm left/right and forward/back, while right-clicking to move the arm up and down. Whenever something is highlighted green, you can grab it with your tentacle. You’re then set to tasks such as “mop the floor” and “clean off the cabinet” with a fully interactive physics model. Which means your tentacle can swipe things off the counter, or you can grab them one at a time.

Why You Should Check This Out: The tasks are simple, but managing Octodad is the real challenge. Learning to coordinate the hands and feet so that it doesn’t take you 30 minutes to wash the dishes is a feat, but you feel really accomplished once you can do simple household chores. The unintentional flailing about also adds to the game’s charm, as it combines with the humor to make situations pretty ridiculous. Your wife is standing there looking at you as you’re flailing about with tentacles everywhere, breaking everything in the kitchen, yet she’s blissfully unaware that you’re really an octopus. It’s the best slapstick routine I’ve seen in a game, period.

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Comments

I want to go to there... Hopefully I'll have a chance to check this out today-- sounds really intriguing.

Any Octomom jokes?

Going to have to try this. Sounds like hilarity shall ensue.

drew327 wrote:

Any Octomom jokes?

How about, I dunno, the title?

I saw this being played by the developers in a crowded room for a Chicago-area indie games meetup, and I have never heard so much laughter. This game is hilarious.

Your description doesn't make this game sound hilarious. It just sounds frustrating.

I played this game the other day and it was indeed quite fun. It's not always hilarious but the absurdity of how you do some of the things, especially the stuff in the kitchen, just hits you. The game is like QWOP but in 3d and not nearly as difficult. Although there were two sections that I almost failed.

Spoiler:

Killing the spiders and climbing the ladder.

Also the ending felt a bit abrupt...

Spoiler:

We never get to see what Octodad was working on in the basement.

Still, I loved the music from the end credits/trailer. I wish it had more of that quirky indie movie touch throughout.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Your description doesn't make this game sound hilarious. It just sounds frustrating.

Life is frustrating, for the noble octopus.

IMAGE(http://www.topatoco.com/graphics/00000001/qw-octo-big.gif)

<3

This could possibly become the greatest Pixar movie ever made.
Game was awesome though, I had a smile on the whole time.