Something Shiny:
Oh…Sir!! The Insult Simulator

I know I’m behind the times here, but I’ve recently started binge-watching Markiplier’s videos. When I saw this masterpiece (gameplay starts at 3:05), I knew that I should have bought Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator yesterday.

This is a very simple, very silly little game. You and your opponent take turns choosing phrases from a communal list in order to create the most devastating insult you can muster. Each character has a pride meter which serves as his or her health bar. Better insults take away more pride, and when a character’s pride reaches zero he is out. That’s basically the entire game.

Oh...Sir!! plays like some strange and wonderful spinoff of Pokémon where every character is a crotchety Brit and every attack is a burn. Like Pokémon, each character has a weakness that you can take advantage of. For example, Sir Knight is keenly aware that he hasn’t kept up with the modern world, so insults about his outdated technology will hit especially hard. You can also do extra damage to your opponent’s pride by focusing your attacks on a single target. One or two insults in a row with the same topic (you, your mother, your hovercar, etc.) are much more effective than two insults with nothing in common.

There’s also a bit of strategy involved - nothing too elaborate, but you do want to keep an eye out for your opponent’s weaknesses and make efforts to protect your own. Since players alternate picking phrases from the same pool, you can protect yourself by taking a specific phrase just to make sure your opponent can’t get it. However, you can still be caught off-guard; each round, each player gets two phrases that only they can use, many of which are specific to their characters. You can refresh those phrases by taking a sip of your tea, because of course that’s how you do that.

And that’s pretty much it for tactics.

On the negative side of things, I would like to see a difficulty option added for the single-player mode, since definitely it’s a bit too easy right now. On my very first playthrough I swept the entire tournament mode without losing once.

And, admittedly, Oh...Sir!! will wear a bit thin after a while. There are new characters and settings to unlock and an online multiplayer mode, all of which give it some replay value, but there’s only so much you can do with the game. It eventually runs into the same problem as Cards Against Humanity: once you’ve seen everything, that’s pretty much it.

Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator won’t be replacing Overwatch or League of Legends as your go-to game, but for two bucks it got me laughing harder than I’ve laughed in months. Go buy it, you whey-faced loon!