Dude, Stop Demo

We all try our best to fit in, even when every instinct tells us to do exactly the opposite. It may be a matter of personal preference, or just the fact that you don’t play well with others, but being the bad guy is refreshing every now and again. It’s a lot of pressure to keep up appearances at all times, which is why most people refrain from doing things that annoy other people.

Dude, Stop is a unique puzzle game that aims to test your patience in a variety of ways. You essentially have to figure out how to solve the puzzles, but it is also acceptable that you do the exact opposite instead. As the developer puts it, people would probably get mad at you if they were watching you play, because it’s quite annoying to see someone do everything wrong.

To start with, the game’s interface is drag-and-drop, which means that most puzzles require you to touch something or move objects around. If the box says “This way up”, then your task is to flip it. If there’s a painting to admire in silence, you have to skew it and make it difficult to concentrate on the picture. In short, if you think something would be annoying, then it’s the proper way to go.

You are not forced to be evil either, on the other hand. It is perfectly possible to solve the puzzles the right way, and you are presented with a statistic at the end of the stage. If you score 100% evil or 100% good, you receive a trophy. You cannot actually use the said trophies in any way, but at least you’ll have proof that you have resisted the temptation to act like a jerk.

From a technical point of view, the game is pretty simple when it comes to visual quality. Most of the objects and environments are hand drawn, and not very well. It’s not the game’s purpose to look good, however, so it probably won’t even matter in the end. There are some sketchy sound effects included too, most of which play whenever you decide to do one thing or the other.

Dude, Stop kind of lacks content at the moment, which means that there are way too few puzzles to keep you entertained for longer than ten minutes. On the other hand, it’s still a fun and unique experience, and we can only hope to see more in the future.