Fun With Tarballs

Came across this cool game, available for Windows, Mac and even Linux, thanks to a Macworld review.

The basic storyline behind Gish, a new side-scrolling platform action game by Chronic Logic, may sound a bit hackneyed. When his girlfriend, Brea, is captured by an evil fiend, Gish must descend into the labyrinthine subterranean sewer world of Dross to save her—jumping from platform to platform, knocking down walls, and battling all manner of strange creatures. There’s just one catch: Gish doesn’t have arms or legs. He’s a 12-pound, animated ball of tar.

Partly I like this game for the regular reasons: it's clever, it's original, and my kids love it. The physics and expressions of Gish are fun to just play with, whether he's grimacing, sloshing against a wall, or racing along, stuck to the ceiling. But the other great thing about Gish to an old-school Unix geek like me, is that it finally gives personality to the age-old term, tarball.

Download the Gish demo and check it out for yourself.