Two rather serious, melancholy games reflecting on death and dying within a month of each other calls for something of a palette cleanser, I think you’ll agree. Allow me to present then Twin Hobo Rocket, a little game about space-faring hobos created by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl for one of the competitions held in the forums over at The Independent Gaming Source. Much like The Graveyard and Passages, Twin Hobo Rocket seeks to provide players with a thoughtful, quiet space to reflect on life and the consequences of the choices we make. Specifically, the consequences involved when two hobos choose to tie themselves to rockets and shamble off into space.

It’s a hard game to play, using the arrow or WASD keys to steer a rocket as drunken as its payload through a storm of cheerful meteors while searching for bags of money hanging from balloons, but so short and sweet it really doesn’t matter. You’ll take off, you’ll wander, you’ll get battered back to the Earth or explode in flight, and you’ll try again. Along the way you’ll encounter aliens to pester for change, if you can get your hobonauts close enough to them without blowing up. After playing a few rounds, the whole thing about hunting down bags of money became secondary to making aliens look as awkward as possible while they made excuses and hurried on to somewhere else. Nice to see space is remarkably like Tompkins Square Park in the summer.

What’s really interesting about Twin Hobo Rocket, though, is its multiplayer aspect. You and a friend can huddle around the trashcan fire computer and rocket into the stars together, with one of you using the WASD keys and the other on arrow keys. It turns a fun distraction into a neat little cooperative challenge, with the rope attaching your missiles meaning you’ll have to work together to get anywhere. You won’t, really, but that’s hardly the point. Multiplayer mode can also be played on your own, which bumps the challenge level up to ridiculous proportions and makes playing even more of a comedy of errors than it was before. So obviously you should try it at least once. The game is Windows-only, I’m afraid, but worth taking a crack if you have the chance. Because honestly, when else in life are you going to have the chance to do this sort of thing?

Filed under: Monday Games