Rip Them Off iOS, PC
Capitalist commentary in the form of an anti-tower defence game
The unspoken goal of tower defence is to Rip Them Apart; to devise a chicane of traps and turrets so damaging that no life survives the journey from one side of the screen to the other. In Rip Them Off, a pacifist but no less sinister spin on the formula, your targets are allowed to leave with their lives – as long as their pockets are empty.
“We actually didn’t start this project with tower defence in mind,” says artist and developer Ava Loz. “The starting point was these little characters moving forwards on every street, like lemmings, to finally invade the whole city.” Before long, however, those invaders became the city’s prey, and commerce its weapon of choice. “As a general rule, we are oriented toward non-combat games, but we also love to mix or transpose game genres in unusual contexts,” says developer and audio designer Mat Loz. “This, plus the fact that economics might as well be some kind of war, convinced us that it would be a good fit.”
As Edge has learned through bitter personal experience, there’s a whole genre of devious level design reserved for airport duty free, intended to dazzle and delay as we attempt to reach our gate. The same principles gove govern play in Rip Them Off. You place shops not only to coax passing pedestrians in and take a chunk of their cash, but to waylay them, givi giving you time to collect funds, build another stor store further down the street, and ensnare the sam same customers once again.
The Th process is captured with a pleasing visual visu simplicity. While every potential customer cust enters as a black silhouette, each purchase purc takes a little of that colour off the top, as if they are being drunk dry. Lay down shops shop of sufficient variety and capacity and they’ll they leave as pale ghosts. “The emotional attachment atta we had right from the start for the little littl characters was a problem,” Ava Loz says. “We were on their side and didn’t want them to be b the ‘enemies’. Humour was definitely the way of overcoming it, and now we affectionately affe call them the Dupes.”
Fail to match a level’s Arbitrary Profit Margin and you’ll face the passive-aggressive ire of The Board, which considers your inability to provide sufficient outlet for the Dupes’ expenditure an “act of gross cruelty”. Despite the wry commentary, however, Rip Them Off makes for a relaxing meditation on capitalism. “The idea is always to make players smile, hopefully making them feel empathy for the Dupes,” Mat Loz says. “As it’s a game with a lot of trial and error, we decided that losing should be treated in a light and funny manner.”
Sometimes, that trial and error is unwelcome. Rip Them Off is rendered in a midcentury modern art style which, while elegant, can obscure. Since all shop types are represented by abstract shapes, choosing the right one for a given situation can be guesswork. A little more information in the UI wouldn’t hurt. Learning is made easy, however, by the ability to restart levels from checkpoints midway through. It’s a system that encourages experimentation and optimisation. “It’s a combination of puzzle games and tower defence,” Mat Loz says. “It wasn’t the easiest thing to get right.”
It’s been tricky, too, to set the tone at a time when governments are encouraging citizens to get out and buy, even at the expense of their own safety. At time of writing, the UK is incentivising restaurant visits with a discount scheme dubbed ‘Eat out to help out’: a slogan that makes us suspect we’re living in a satire ourselves. “It speaks to what we were willing to merely hint at in Rip Them Off,” Ava Loz says. “There seems to be a persistent encouragement of economic consumption despite indebtedness, overproduction, exploitation, working conditions, and now, a pandemic.”
Despite the wry commentary, this makes for a relaxing meditation on capitalism