Blippo+ is certainly one of the strangest games you could play this year–or any year, really. Released on Steam, Switch, and Playdate (the small yellow handheld famous for its crank controls), it strains the fundamental definition of a video game. Instead, it’s more of a simulation of TV channel-surfing in the late ’80s or early ’90s, a kind of interaction younger generations actually have no experience with. It’s a game whose target audience would seem to be very few people at all. And yet, because I enjoy exceptionally weird experiences, it delivers.
Blippo+ is a collection of live-action skits meant to play like a cable television package from 30ish years ago. When you first start up the game, it “scans” for channels–a process I vaguely recalled interacting with as a kid when Blippo+ reminded me. Then, once its dozen or so channels are found, you simply… watch TV.
The TV schedule plays out in real time. These are not on-demand offerings a la Netflix or HBO Max. This is a perpetually cycling programming schedule. If you tune into the news channel, for example, you’ll miss what’s happening at the same time on the music, family or–yes–even the porn channel. Each program only lasts a few minutes, so it’s not as though you’re locked in for 30 or more minutes if you want to watch any single program in its entirety. This also makes it easy enough to eventually catch everything, either by channel-surfing routinely like a kid after school in 1996, or by sticking with one channel at a time until it has looped fully, then moving onto the next channel.
Every show becomes a micro-story you can follow for several in-game weeks at a time.
The story of Blippo+ is that you, the player, have tuned into TV signals from an alien world called Blip. Its inhabitants look like us, only with a fashion sense that colorfully combines Clinton-era garb with makeup and hairdos that feel noticeably extraterrestrial.
Its TV shows are similarly out of this world. Cooking shows walk you through how to prepare vegetables that don’t exist on Earth. A woman with a literal third eye hosts a mystical, horoscope-focused show. Most interestingly, early news programs in the show’s many hours of programming discuss the revelation that some tens of thousands of PeeDees (the ubiquitous smartphone-like devices on planet Blip) have been activated elsewhere in the universe. Essentially, you play the role of interloper, rubber-necking at another world whose signals you’ve inadvertently picked up.
This concept would likely work best on the Playdate, the already-strange device that releases games on a weekly schedule, giving its players a schedule to opt into and discuss on Reddit, YouTube, and Discord. Canonically, the Playdate itself is the PeeDee device that everyone on Blip owns and lives by. I didn’t get to play it on that platform, but I found Blippo+ achieves its main goal on Steam too, especially since I played it with a controller and let myself feel like I really was channel-surfing, like maybe you did in the old days.
One of the coolest aspects of Blippo+ is its TV Guide-like channel. At the risk of sounding like an old man, back in my day, you’d watch the TV Guide channel to see what’s on now and what’s coming on later. You’d then have to make yourself available for whatever interested you. Blippo’s guide channel amusingly captures this defunct experience, with filler music and narration filling in the space as the programs unfold with or without you tuning into them. No matter what you’re watching, it’s also filtered with that peak drabness of the 1990s, pre-HD and noticeably drained of color.
The cooking shows had an oddly unsettling effect, as I watched these alien crops be prepared for dishes.
On Playdate, new content for Blippo+ has dropped every Thursday to flesh out the game’s overarching storyline, in which different programs call back to one another. Meanwhile, the residents of Blip grapple with the existence of otherworldly voyeurs such as yourself, which becomes appointment television, a meta-serial about other planets and the weirdos who live there.
On Steam and Switch, those content drops are instead unlocked as you watch more of the shows. Roughly every 30-40 minutes in my several hours with the game, I’d get a notification that more content was available. It’s handled this way because Playdate devotees have been unraveling the weekly Blippo+ drops for months now, whereas those on traditional PC and console are playing catch-up. This hinders the communal aspect of Blippo+, which I find appealing, but that’s not to say the project falls apart without this piece intact.
Blippo+ is a game by and for Theater Kids most of all, though I enjoyed my time with it despite not being one myself. Each skit has a dry humor and an undercurrent of adoration for acting and the arts that will absolutely be alienating–no pun intended–for some players. Even some of those who like the idea of simulating this quintessential ’90s experience of couch-potatoing away your Saturday with Blippo’s soap operas and music videos may find that these skits don’t quite fulfill the fantasy.
Scrolling the TV Guide-like channel is either going to be nostalgic… or appropriately alien.
That’s because, for as great a job as Blippo+ does at actually simulating the physical element of half-mindedly flipping channels like a kid procrastinating on their homework, the many shows developed for Blippo+ ultimately feel too similar in tone. They’re all going for a dry, silly weirdness. In my eight or so hours with Blippo+, I didn’t see anything that took itself too seriously. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked, or the creators just weren’t interested in that side of its imaginary people. Or maybe that’s their way of saying planet Blip really is just a bunch of one-note dweebs who never take things too seriously.
Still, I most appreciated Blippo+ for its indirect parodies of TV shows from our world. A Bill Nye-like scientist spent his shows interviewing guests like a brain in a jar, who was said to be one of Blip’s most famous philosophers. I could read reviews about a series called “Werf’s Tavern,” which spoofs something like a Doctor Who, right down to the poorly aged depictions of some would-be harmful stereotypes. The pornography channel, Zest, comically captures the formative ’90s experience of trying to de-scramble the imagery while saxophones cut through the static. One of my favorite series, Realms Beyond, tells spooky anthological stories a la The Twilight Zone, but does so via spoken word, making it more like a radio show than Serling’s seminal sci-fi series.
Blippo+ rarely parodies any specific series and is instead more interested in capturing certain vibes or subgeneres–stitchings of moments in time from yesteryear. Like on my home planet, Blip’s programming isn’t all worth watching, but there are some gems on rotation for those who care to make a lazy weekend out of it.
Like my older brother in 1996, you can try your best to de-scramble the porn channel.
Blippo+ feels like an art school project that broke containment and went international. What the team has done with a seemingly shoestring budget makes for a laudable DIY effort. Calling this a game could mislead some users, given it’s really more like a ’90s-colored cable TV package without any on-demand features. It’s interactive, yes, but only in the way one’s TV was in the mid-’90s. This sort of experience is sure to be unlike anything else you’ve ever played–and for younger players, anything they’ve even experienced in the first place–though a significant number of people will surely come out of it more confused than amused. Still, if you can match Blippo’s vibe, you may find yourself homesick for another world.
