Tag: People Playground

A Strangely Good Simulator

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

Now People Playground has no shortage of contraptions simulating various pieces of military equipment. Fixed wing aircraft are either the best or worst, as you get one pass before having to either try and land the thing (no fun) or let it crash (more fun!).

The strange thing is that if you pit one of these resistible forces against the moveable objects of elaborate destructible buildings also made in-game, you get a bizarrely realistic and illustrative example of the problem with urban warfare targeting. A bomb or explosive, even one that hits a building, won’t necessarily destroy more than a small part of it. A large bomb can do better but has the problem of more collater-I mean, no problems whatsoever since this is People Playground.

Quite fun that a silly ragdoll physics simulator can illustrate the issues of having one shot, having to dive, aim, and lead, and knowing the target is not guaranteed to be neutralized even after a successful hit.

Escape From The Facility

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

My current People Playground mod-enabled obsession is the “Facility Escape”. The background for this RP is simple: A character from another setting is trapped in the mysterious mad science super-facility and has to try and escape, fighting their way past an army of workers, security contractors, androids, and who knows what else.

Characters from settings as distinct as Undertale and Hotline Miami have been placed in the playground. The (intentional) clumsiness of the human figures just, if anything adds to the fun. There’s nothing like jury-rigging an “epic” sword vs. chainsaw battle.

Characters who have “earned the privilege” of escaping have the final exit simulated by a black hole being created with them sucked in. This symbolizes a portal to their home setting (or somewhere else?) being activated.

People Playground Peoples

On By coilerxiiIn Essay1 Comment

People Playground Peoples

My favorite go-to relaxing game now, especially after I’ve discovered the massive and excellent mod scene, is People Playground. I of course act out a lot of scenarios-ok, a few types of scenarios, involving the mysterious mad science facility. And here are the “roles”.

Subjects

Represented usually by the default “humans”, subjects are the test subjects who are either being killed in terrible ways (don’t feel too bad for them, they struggle to walk several steps) or rebelling in some form (and usually ending up getting killed in terrible ways).

Technicians

Dressed in work-esque outfits, technicians usually sport some kind of chemical mask. They’re often placed by pieces of machinery, where they operate them and oversee experiments (very, very frequently becoming collateral damage). Unlike troopers, technicians mostly use a min-max arsenal-either finicky destructive contraptions or simple/improvised-type weapons that they built themselves.

Troopers

Troopers are the enforcement arm of the facility, being dressed in various kinds of military uniform and carrying a large variety of conventional weapons. Don’t worry, they always get killed in quantity too.

Commanders

Clad in various types of ornate and/or formal clothing, commanders wield sidearms and direct the “experiments”. However, a field commander is just as vulnerable as anyone else on the playground.

A Thousand Words: People Playground

On By coilerxiiIn A Thousand Words, ReviewLeave a comment

People Playground

When I was young, one of my favorite games was the Rube Goldberg generator known as The Incredible Machine. Now I’ve been delighted to announce that I’ve found a spiritual successor, People Playground. You can make all sorts of contraptions there in a physics sandbox-that mostly have the end goal of killing people. Or monsters. Or robots. For someone with as frequently twisted a sense of humor as me, I’ve loved it.

Yes, you can manually spawn a weapon and just kill your test subjects, but where’s the fun in that? One example of the breadth of this game is my most satisfying creation. One victim was strapped to a chair while another had an incandescent light bulb wired to him. The light bulb was switched on and given a heat transfer, causing the first victim to burn to death. A heat pipe was then attached to the second victim’s head, leading it to light up like a candle, before the whole body followed suit.

There’s a real sense of satisfaction in making an elaborate deathtrap that finally, actually works, and it’s for that reason that I recommend this game for people who like messing around in sandboxes. It’s very fun.