New game on Nintendo Switch requires players to act drunk for superpowers

Be the hero you deserve, but not the hero you need right now.

Here at SoraNews24, we’re always covering the latest in AAA gaming, whether it’s Morita Shogi for the NES or the newest toilet racing simulator. Now, we’re pleased to share a new game that takes all the fun and excitement of stumbling around your home drunk and puts it into a video game.

YoppaRising, a play on the Japanese word “yopparai,” which means “drunk,” came out for the Nintendo Switch on 24 October for 800 yen (US$5.20). In the game, you control a character who becomes stronger when swaying around like a drunkard. It does this by making innovative use of the Joy-Con’s IR camera to detect the player’s faltering and lurching in real life.

Just set one Joy-Con down with its IR motion camera pointed towards you and use the analog stick on the other Joy-Con to control your character. While standing normally, the character is a mild-mannered secret agent navigating a hazard-filled complex. However, when the going gets tough, the tough get wasted and you must begin swaying like a palm tree in a hurricane to trigger the character’s superpowers.

Image: @Press

I was curious to see how this premise actually plays out so I downloaded YoppaRising from the Nintendo eShop. As mentioned, you have to first put the right Joy-Con so that the camera on its bottom is slightly jutting over the edge of a table facing you. The height doesn’t seem to matter that much.

The gameplay is really straightforward and you simply have to navigate from one door to another on the floor of a building and pick up a folder of dossiers in the process. However, each floor is loaded with hazards and this is where things get interesting. By transforming into a drunken superhero you are able to push aside obstacles like boxes and chairs and are also impervious to weapons like electric barriers.

However, becoming a superhero brings a new set of pitfalls, namely chairs. Should your inebriated champion get too close to the open end of a comfy seat, he will immediately collapse in it and fall asleep. So you’ll have to literally be on your toes phasing between drunk and sober in some rooms.

The game is pretty unforgiving when it comes to acting drunk too. You can’t just sheepishly wiggle around a little bit and expect to hold onto your superpower. You really have to lurch about with dramatic motions, which adds to the difficulty by making it harder to keep your eyes on the screen. A bar at the top lets you know how well you’re stumbling and there’s also an indicator in the top left corner that shows how well the IR camera is picking up your movements lest you drunkenly wander out of frame.

Overall, I was very impressed with how tight this game was. The whole motion detection system works surprisingly well and the gameplay is simple to pick up but deceptively hard to master. It would have been fun if more of a storyline was woven into it, but for 800 yen it’s highly satisfying and well worth picking up.

YoppaRising comes from the brilliant mind of Takuhiro Miyazawa who’s constantly finding novel ways to use the Joy-Con such as Kami Ga Nai  (No Paper) in which you must help a guy stuck on the toilet by bringing him paper. To do this, players stick a Joy-Con into an actual roll of toilet paper and roll it back and forth on a board to control the TP on the TV.

Miyazawa also released Hakodake Blues (Box Only Blues), in which you help a guy who has lost everything, even his clothes, and is left with only a cardboard box to hide his shame. Players must get an actual cardboard box and hide in it when someone comes near.

Then there’s Koe Mane King (Voice Imitation King) in which players use a USB microphone to try and imitate a variety of sound effects like animal calls, machine noises, and chimes heard on TV.

Miyazawa is quite frankly a modern-day Da Vinci in Switch game development and he also has his studio Miyazaworks, where he comes up with even more elaborate control schemes for games.

He seems destined for big things in gaming, so be sure to test out these mini-games for a fun time. YoppaRising is localized as Dizzy Hero in English, removing direct references to being drunk for some reason. I could also find Kami Ga Nai and Koe Mane King in English as Give Me Toilet Paper! and Voice Mimicry Show respectively.

Don’t sleep on this, but be sure to sleep it off when you’re done.

Source: My Nintendo Store,  YoppaRising, @Press, Miyazaworks
Featured image: @Press
Photos © SoraNews24 (Unless otheriwse noted)
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