GAME
Free
Diabolically twisted first-person shooter
Playing Pencil Whipped is like being trapped inside a very disturbed child's drawing. You are beset by a grotesque array of stick-figure enemies with giant, misshapen heads and buckteeth that threaten with scatological schoolyard taunts like "I'm gonna rip you a new one!" Pick up a simply sketched shotgun to defend yourself, squeeze the trigger, and instead of a realistic gunshot, you hear your weapon say "bwa-whoom!"
Pencil Whipped's creator, Lonnie Flickinger, is a hobbyist with no programming experience. Using low-end game-creation software, rudimentary drawing skills, and a diabolically twisted imagination, he's managed to create an unnerving, absorbing, and hilarious PC game.
This 3-D world is immediately familiar to anyone who's played Quake or Doom, even though everything in it is flat and dimensionless, as if it were all just pencil doodlings (which most of it is). When you kill the cartoonish creatures, they flutter to the ground like pieces of paper. All of the sound effects, from creaky doors ("psheerie!") to grenade explosions ("ka-whoah!") and guillotines ("shhhhhhink!"), are voiced by Flickinger. He also speaks the various characters' vulgar dialog, with the exception of some tiny ratlike creatures that his 6-year-old daughter eeks out (she does a very convincing death rattle).
Flickinger's bizarre techniques transcend mere amateurishness. He's created a compelling new lo-fi aesthetic, and has become a cause célèbre in the process. Pencil Whipped, a finalist at the Independent Games Festival, is part of the Game Show exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art through April 15.
Despite the attention, Flickinger has yet to make money on the venture. Still, he continues to tinker with the game and hopes to eventually sell copies of a more complete version. It's hard to imagine how Pencil Whipped will be able to compete with the photorealistic graphics, expansive environments, and eight-figure budgets of mainstream PC releases. But as you dodge the treacherous floor spikes in Hurtin' Ass Hall, you can't help but think that Flickinger and the game industry desperately need each other.
Pencil Whipped : www.maxminn.com/chiselhead.
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