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Enjoy some Ryanair Boeing 737 safety manual ekphrasis in Johnson A Plane Manand boy is my Johnson tired
and boy is my Johnson tired
Image credit:Hyphinett
Image credit:Hyphinett
“It’s always been a dream of mine to be able to produce interactive works purely using the phone in my pocket and I think this game has been deeply fulfilling for me due to that,” says developer Breogán Hackett AKA Hyphinett. Kat Brewster previously wrote some lovely words about Hyphinett’s gameVitreousand other Bitsy horrorsin this pieceabout how the engine lends itself so well to lo-fi spooks. You can find Hyphinett’s collective bitshere.
There’s perhaps something lofty to be said about how finding inspiration in mass-produced, utilitarian images speaks to the spirit of the age, but I think Hackett mainly just wanted to do something fun on a long plane ride. I mainly spend long hauls cataloguing the increasingly exasperated facial expressions of whoever keeps bringing me free gin and tonics, so this seems far more productive.
But I am very interested in how the mind naturally jumps to narrativise inanimate or otherwise prescriptive images, and how the in-jokey joys of subverting symbolic meanings feels like a very ancient and very instinctive game. A very small example of this being the"no fucking trumpets, buddy"signs. It also reminds me a little of Joe Richardson’sadventure gamesusing renaissance art likeFour Last Things. And then there’sThe Pedestrian- a puzzle game that has you play as a public signage silhouette.
