JUNKIE GAME IS FOR DOPAMINE JUNKIES
If there were one game in my collection I could erase from existence, it would be King Oddball. Every time I scroll through my digital PS4 library looking for something new to play, this abominable little character sticks out his provocative tongue at me, souring my mood instantly. I can’t fully explain why, but I genuinely despise his design.
He’s the anti-hero of one of those countless low-budget games I never asked for. It arrived one fateful month via the PlayStation Plus subscription, seemingly to placate PlayStation Vita owners—back when Sony still pretended to care about their handheld.
This is an addictive but toxic mobile-style affair that somehow made its way onto home consoles. You control everything with a single button (except for the world map, navigated with the D-pad). The limbless King Oddball invades some unfortunate land by hurling rocks with his perpetually wagging tongue. You press X at just the right moment during a pendulum swing to release the rock, then pray that gravity, momentum, and luck combine to crush all resistance in that stage.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s essentially an Angry Birds clone. It was even made by fellow Finnish developers 10tons Ltd. Make of that what you will—though their studio name conveniently secures them a top spot in alphabetical listings. The developers have cited inspiration from the 1974 sci-fi film Zardoz, featuring a giant stone head terrorizing a post-apocalyptic Earth, as well as from Microsoft oddball Steve Ballmer. Yes, that guy.
Each level starts you off with three rocks. Your opposition consists of tanks, helicopters, and soldiers—mostly static targets, some exposed, others hiding behind structures of varying durability. Leave even a single enemy standing and you must restart the level. Crush three or more enemies with one throw and you’re rewarded with a bonus rock. The same applies if the stone rebounds and hits King Oddball himself.
Is this a game? I suppose it is. It has plenty of levels. They get harder. It has graphics. It has sound. All of it technically serves a purpose. There’s even a kind of music—a torturous melodic loop that feels like it was commissioned from a mercenary composer who hired a small ensemble to record live instruments. It perfectly captures the sensation of having an ugly invader wag his tongue in your face for hours on end.
Despite frequently raging at the game’s unfair dependence on rebound luck, I became hopelessly hooked and finished it in a single, prolonged session. About five hours, give or take. It was miserable, but I wanted it over with. I knew I’d never return. After all, victory in any given level was always just a stone’s throw away.
In hindsight, I can’t recommend King Oddball, not because it fails as a game, but because of what it does to you. It’s deliberately designed to pull you in, drain you, and spit you out, irritated and a few productive hours poorer. It’s like eating a jumbo bag of potato chips: initially satisfying, deeply regrettable long before you reach the bottom. The rest is just compulsion—your brain’s inability to leave leftovers, driven by some primitive urge to finish what you started. You know it’s unhealthy, but you keep shoveling it in anyway.
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