The Torture Game 2

By: Derek Yu

On: May 29th, 2008

Torture Game 2

Somewhere out there, a U.S. Senator is earning his or her wings.

But really, what I like about Torture Game 2 is not so much that it lets you hurt a guy with nails, rope, spikes, a chainsaw, etc. – the actual gore is pretty campy, in my opinion. No, what I like is that you can use his body to make macabre art! The game even provides a little paintbrush for you to paint on him with.

For example, check out what the creative folks at Sensible Erection (NSFWish) have done with the game.

  • Radix

    Every discussion on this game I’ve seen so far segues quickly into talk about StudioS games and completely ignores the topic after that.

    Go.

  • Gr.Viper

    Badly need image upload/store feature.

  • MisterX

    Is morbid art allowed to have religious themes?
    http://s5.directupload.net/images/080529/9miehak3.jpg

    Anyway, quite an interesting game. Games of this kind, letting you experiment with various ways of torturing the person usually are, but for example the absence of terrible screaming sounds and the added “art” layer really make this a lot less short-lived.
    Now, let’s experiment..

  • Zulgaines

    ^Look Mr. Bubbles, an angel…

  • Nikica

    ^LOL, BioShock gets boring after some time.

    Yeah the art is pretty cool, I like to make a skeleton of him and then paint the whole body with the green at the beggining.

  • Zulgaines

    If Bioshock had the kind of open multiplayer SS2 had I would of gotten a lot more play time out of it.

    I’m not at the art point yet, still trying to see how much I can hurt him before he dies.

  • Zulgaines

    This game can’t be too incredibly healthy.

    http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/2484/dave00d4cht4.jpg

  • Gr.Viper

    I once ripped his head off with carefully applied ropes and he still lived.

    I see a red dude and I want to paint him black…

  • PHeMoX

    Only complaint I have is that it isn’t using real soft-body physics for the chainsaw hahaha, but it’s a otherwise neat game.

    I’m sure I won’t be playing it much more often though.

  • http://www.lithiumleaf.com LaughingCrow

    This game managed to scare me. When I picked the nail I wasn’t expecting such a big one.

  • jkd

    LaughingCrow: same here.

  • Logiebear

    MisterX:

    On the subject of morbid religious art…
    http://i46.servimg.com/u/f46/12/26/34/20/untitl10.jpg

  • namuol

    this is surprisingly well done

    and likewise thoroughly disturbing.

  • Johan

    Interesting, it reminds me of torturing/stacking dead bodies in Deus Ex 2… That was my first experience with dead bodies and ragdoll physics.

  • Gr.Viper

    *That was my first experience with dead bodies*

    You could have worded that better :))

  • chutup

    I find it very disturbing that you think it’s acceptable to endorse such a game on Tigsource, and doubly disturbing that nobody else seems to care.

  • Zulgaines

    I’m sorry his holiness doesn’t approve.

  • HMT

    I’m not trying to be a prick, or anything else here, and I’m trying to have an open mind (or something), but I have to say that I find this game to be pretty gross.

    TIGSource can of course post whatever it wants to (and I usually really enjoy and appreciate the content), but I don’t recall seeing anything here before that seems so unabashedly sadistic. I tend to agree with the whole “video games are not life” argument, but this seems like it may be going a bit too far. I don’t know.

    Anyway, not trying to start a flame war here… just a discussion. Is everybody else really okay with this?

  • Derek

    It’s a blurry line, to be sure.

    But here’s my two cents: I probably wouldn’t post a game that’s strictly about hurting others if there wasn’t something interesting about it for me. Also, I thought this was pretty cheesy, in a “bad horror movie” kind of way. The fact that the guy’s expression looks so blank makes the whole thing seem kind of ridiculous.

  • chutup

    I thought the expression was the most horrible thing about the whole game. I guess if you took it as a B-horror sort of thing, that’s ok, but I found it far too realistic for comfort.

  • Radix

    Everything is okay until I have a gut reaction to it. Then it’s immoral and wrong.

  • zomgzomgzomg

    Your support for this game illustrates well how disassociated you soulless nerdy couch potatoe fucktards really are. TIGsource loses a reader. Goodbye.

  • MisterX

    I don’t think this game is so very problematic. I’m not the kind of guy who loves gore that much. Just yesterday I watched a rather brutal trailer for the upcomming “Brothers in Arms” game and thought the comments were just embarassing (“ololol you can blow nazi legs of LOLAWESOME game ill buy!!1” something of the kind). Anyway, what I ment with my earlier post is that I like how Torture Game 2 doesn’t seem to be so focused on the whole sadism like other games of the kind. The guy doesn’t scream horridly every time you hurt him and his expression doesn’t even change a little bit. So in the end it’s all about experimenting for me. I love experimenting with games like Phun, Crayon Physics, basically any kind of “sandbox game”, and this is no exception.
    Does that make me a soulless nerdy fucktard?

  • Prospero

    Delightful. *Municipal Abortionist* and now this.

    I seriously wonder WTF developers create “games” like this for. Attention? Media coverage? Just to stir the shit a little? Congratulations! Success on all counts! Be proud that you’ve done your bit to improve the world.

    Judging by all the support the game has already, there must be something very wrong with me. But in my opinion, a piece of software whose *entire idea* revolves around torturing someone to see how long you can keep them alive should have no need to exist, however it may be presented.

  • Anonymous

    Great, pointlessly violent toys. Just what indie games needed to begin with. Look, I’m not gonna get all ultra-outraged over a game where you torture a fictional character to death, but do indie games NEED this? Do we NEED people thinking of us as sick, psychopathic freaks?

    Before you make a game, will you please think of the effect it will have on indie games? I’m all for freedom of expression, but God, do we need people hating us?

  • curezen

    personally i love this game. and i know i shouldn’t. but, seriously i’ve always wanted to do this. and this game lets me horribly mutilate some one without any problems or actually hurting some one.

    i want to kill some one, but i don’t. games let me do this

  • Radix

    Bah. Quit it. You don’t need to justify enjoying a game of any kind. That you, or anybody anywhere, enjoys it is all that matters. Squeamish? Try changing the channel rather than bursting a righteous outrage valve.

    For the record I’ve never even played this game, but I don’t need to. You people are suggesting self-censorship, and that really is wrong.

  • synonymous

    To zomgzomgzomg:

    I’m sure your really making a difference.
    Really.

  • Gr.Viper

    *entire idea revolves around torturing someone to see how long you can keep them alive*

    Keeping it alive is not required at all. And considering something alive just because it has a lifebar…

    Anyway, why getting all fussy about a game when things happening in real life can be infinitely more brutal?

  • Anonymous

    For the record, my point was “What will people think of indie game players after playing this?” Not “OMFG THIS GAME IS TEH EVIL!!11!!”

  • zagibu

    I think this is very disgusting, but at the same time, quite interesting. Torture is the most repulsive thing I can think of, and it really provokes a hatred in me against people who can enjoy such acts. But it is a good tool to measure how stunted your empathy is. Or how good you are at disabling it.
    It also raises the question anew whether such products work as valves or whether they do the opposite and provoke even further desires in this direction.
    I think it would be interesting to learn more about the background of the game. Why did someone put a lot of his time into creating it?

  • Anonymous

    Actually, in retrospect, maybe I’m just so pissed at the stupidity of Fox “News” that I’ve gone into “DEAR GOD WE MUST NOT PROVOKE THEM TO DO MORE STUPID “NEWS” REPORTS!” Mode. That, and Jack Thompson might go after it, and I am sick of his bickering. He already blamed SCMRPG for… I think it was the Virginia Tech Massacre? But yeah, other than that, this IS actually neat, I guess. I mean, the paint brush is fun to play around with.

  • Derek

    Don’t let the Mainstream Media dictate what you create (or play)!

    (Unless it’s very illegal.)

  • Satan

    Wow, indie gamers bitching about what’s allowed to be done in a game?

    Clap clap you tools, if you don’t like it don’t play it, but don’t go all morally righteous FCC and holier-than-thou on us.

    Playing with a physics toy about torture makes you a psychopath about as much as a game about stealing cars makes you thief.

  • remarque

    I think theres a difference between whats legal and whats ethical. The Klu Klux Klan has every right to assemble and spread their message of hate and I wouldn’t try to take that right away from them. That being said I deeply disagree with them on a moral level. People are afraid of the “M” word and they associate it with censorship. I’m not saying there isn’t a reason for that association, but it doesn’t mean that every time some thinks something is unethical that they want to repeal the first amendment.

  • http://www.fusionapple.com Jordan

    Nice comment remarque.

    I’ll start out by saying that I find the game quite repulsive.

    Secondly, I would like to say that most of the people here who do not find the game repulsive (perhaps all) are in all likelihood perfectly “normal,” reasonable human beings who would never torture anyone, unto death or otherwise; people who are no doubt fantastic individuals–Derek being a case in point (okay, don’t read too much into my use of “normal,” but you get what I mean ;).

    The reason I start with these two observations is because I think it is here that our “discussion” seems to go astray. The picture I get whenever this topic comes up (violence in videogames, etc.) is that you have two general camps of people who are pretty set in what they think, and both camps tend to feel that the members of the other camp are clearly out of touch with reality (“too high strung, righteous, illogical, preachy” on the one side, and, well, “soulless nerdy couch potato fucktards” on the other); neither camp is really interested in exchanging views, or listening to the other side, and everybody ends up shouting stupid things at each other.

    So here’s where my initial observations come in: I find this game disgusting, sadistic, and ugly; Derek does not. Derek is a cool guy, and, for the sake of argument, we’ll say that I am too ;). AND WE DISAGREE. So what does this mean? It means that there is something pretty complex going on here. This is not a black and white, cut and dried situation. It’s tempting to think that it is, because issues like this tend to be deeply felt, and seem so clear to each individual (myself included), that if we put a bag over our head, it’s easy to just ignore the fact that there are rational, reasonable, downright cool people on both sides of the debate — which is why we need conversation.

    Of course, that statement itself is a dreadful simplification, because there is no one “line” from which we can actually draw up sides–I’m not against all violence in video games. Anyway, think of all the issues that we have swirling around here: free speech, creativity, “independence,” artistic expression, morality, religious convictions, ethics, responsibility, etc. etc. etc. Most of us have a complex overlay of thought/beliefs going on.

    I think this is a great opportunity for us to have a significant discussion about things that impact independent gaming, ourselves, and the world (yeah, yeah, light shines down from the sky, choir sings in background :).

    I’d like to make three small proposals:
    1. Let’s not call each other names.
    2. Let’s not make fun of or puke on each other’s convictions.
    3. We could probably do with less ALL CAPS.

    Okay, so I’d still like to post a few comments about why I find this game so distasteful, but I’ve been really wordy here, so I’ll leave that for my next post.

    (P.S. If any of this seems patronizing, my appologies: I don’t mean it to be.)

  • syrion

    Well, that’s it for me. See you guys on rockpapershotgun.

  • Anonymous

    “Don’t let the Mainstream Media dictate what you create (or play)!

    (Unless it’s very illegal.)”

    Illegal? You mean, like… Kill The Ethnic Minorities In Real-Life-o-Vision whilst Dumping Children in Acid Pools… In Real-Life-o-Vision… Using Copyrighted Music in a manner that is Not Fair Use?

  • Ninja Dodo

    Can’t say I’m about to stop visiting in protest but I am a bit taken aback by the sheer tastelessness of this entry.

    Surely indie developers have better things to do?

  • mesawhosa

    I think there are som hardcore rape simulations out there as well. Excellent stuff for next post on TIG. It’s just a game anyway, art..

  • mesawhosa

    Haha, censor.

  • Soccer Mom

    I’m offended!

  • IndieJoJo

    I don’t have anything insightful to add (at least what hasn’t already been brought up), but I -am- disgusted with this.

  • Alevice

    I really like this game from the concept of a painting sandbox. If there was a way to remove bloodsplatter (and additional painting options), this would work great for some not-so-offensive art.

  • Phd in whatever field lets me claim authority in this situation

    Maybe people would be less disgusted with this game (more of a toy, really) if it had some sort of trumped-up story at the beginning explaining how you must torture the location of the bombs out of an oddly-inanimate terrorist (whose will is so strong that he will never give you the secret or make any sounds at all). Or maybe it could be like Execution, where people come up with convoluted backstories to explain why they are totally in the right to administer some video violence.

    THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY BOUND GUYS WITH HIGH PAIN THRESHOLDS!
    ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO TORTURE THOSE GUYS AND SAVE THE PRESIDENT?

  • Derek

    I do love a good discussion! So even if we lose a few people, overall I’m really happy I posted this.

    Jordan, I appreciate your level-headed comments. A clarification, though:

    I actually do find the theme of this game to be sadistic and ugly. It’s called “The Torture Game,” and I’m most definitely morally opposed to torture. I think the way they handled it is pretty campy and mitigates the impact a lot, but I find the basic concept behind the game to be morally repugnant, yes.

    Fortunately (or unfortunately, however you want to see it), that doesn’t mean that I don’t also find it to be kind of fascinating. I’m as interested in the evil, ugly, and tasteless, as I am the good, beautiful, uplifting, and cute. IRL, I try to fight for the better aspects of life and human nature, but I’m really glad we can express the other side in artwork, music, and games. And I’ll happily get involved. Imagine a world without horror movies, pulp fiction, death metal, lowbrow comics, or violent video games – not only would it be seriously boring, but it’d also be seriously repressive.

    So, I don’t know, I think being offended, being grossed out… these are good emotions to feel on occasion, provided it’s through art or entertainment. It lets you test out your moral boundaries without hurting anybody IRL. Feelings, morals… they’re like muscles – they need to be worked out occasionally or else you end up like Jack Thompson or that woman that said Mass Effect was porn on FOX News when she hadn’t even played the game.

  • chutup

    Thankyou Derek, you just about wrapped it up for me with that post.

  • http://www.fusionapple.com Jordan

    Derek, thanks for the clarification. Sorry for miss-representing your perspective, but in my defense, I don’t think your position was clear; I feel like your last comment changes a lot–if something like that had been posted on the front page I think we might have avoided some (not all, but maybe a lot) of the tension that has sprung up here. Of course, perhaps the tension, and the discussion it stirs up, are good things, as you point out. Anyway, I want to think about what you’ve said a bit before I make a response.

  • Mandrake42

    I’m kind of surprised at the reaction to this one. I haven’t played it myself but Derek did say in his initial post that it wasn’t the torture that he had liked but the way people had used it to make macabrely artistic screen shots with it. And once again, to point out, we all know this is computer generated imagery, not someone actually being tortured to death. Do we treat every simulated death as a real death, do we play no more games, watch no more movies, listen to no more news that features death just to distance ourself from the act of dying? How far do we draw the line?. I haven’t played this game simply because the subject matter doesn’t interest me. I’m not going to boycott TIGS because of it.