T
he unspoken goal of tower defence is to
Rip Them Apart; to devise a chicane of
traps and turrets so damaging that no life
survives the journey from one side of the
screen to the other. In Rip Them Off, a pacifist
but no less sinister spin on the formula, your
targets are allowed to leave with their lives –
as long as their pockets are empty.
“We actually didn’t start this project with
tower defence in mind,” says artist and
developer Ava Loz. “The starting point was
these little characters moving forwards on
every street, like lemmings, to finally invade
the whole city.” Before long, however, those
invaders became the city’s prey, and commerce
its weapon of choice. “As a general rule, we are
oriented toward non-combat games, but we
also love to mix or transpose game genres in
unusual contexts,” says developer and audio
designer Mat Loz. “This, plus the fact that
economics might as well be some kind of war,
convinced us that it would be a good fit.”
As Edge has learned through bitter
personal experience, there’s a whole genre of
devious level design reserved for airport duty
free, intended to dazzle and delay as we
attempt to reach our gate. The same principles
govern play in Rip Them Off. You place shops
not only to coax passing pedestrians in and
take a chunk of their cash, but to waylay them,
giving you time to collect funds, build another
store further down the street, and ensnare the
same customers once again.The process is captured with a pleasing
visual simplicity. While every potential
customer enters as a black silhouette, each
purchase takes a little of that colour off the
top, as if they are being drunk dry. Lay down
shops of sufficient variety and capacity and
they’ll leave as pale ghosts. “The emotional
attachment we had right from the start for the
little characters was a problem,” Ava Loz says.
“We were on their side and didn’t want them
to be the ‘enemies’. Humour was definitely the
way of overcoming it, and now we
affectionately call them the Dupes.”Fail to match a level’s Arbitrary Profit
Margin and you’ll face the passive-aggressive
ire of The Board, which considers your
inability to provide sufficient outlet for the
Dupes’ expenditure an “act of gross cruelty”.
Despite the wry commentary, however, Rip
Them Off makes for a relaxing meditation
on capitalism. “The idea is always to make
players smile, hopefully making them feel
empathy for the Dupes,” Mat Loz says. “As
it’s a game with a lot of trial and error, we
decided that losing should be treated in
a light and funny manner.”
Sometimes, that trial and error is
unwelcome. Rip Them Off is rendered in a
midcentury modern art style which, while
elegant, can obscure. Since all shop types are
represented by abstract shapes, choosing the
right one for a given situation can be
guesswork. A little more information in the
UI wouldn’t hurt. Learning is made easy,
however, by the ability to restart levels from
checkpoints midway through. It’s a system
that encourages experimentation and
optimisation. “It’s a combination of puzzlegames and tower defence,” Mat Loz says. “It
wasn’t the easiest thing to get right.”
It’s been tricky, too, to set the tone at a time
when governments are encouraging citizens to
get out and buy, even at the expense of their
own safety. At time of writing, the UK is
incentivising restaurant visits with a discount
scheme dubbed ‘Eat out to help out’: a slogan
that makes us suspect we’re living in a satire
ourselves. “It speaks to what we were willing
to merely hint at in Rip Them Off,” Ava Loz says.
“There seems to be a persistent encouragement
of economic consumption despite
indebtedness, overproduction, exploitation,
working conditions, and now, a pandemic.” QRIP THEM OFF
Developer/publisher
Lozange Lab
Format iOS, PC
Origin France
Release September
Capitalist commentary in the form of an anti-tower defence game
Throat sweet
Lozange Lab, the indie
studio in Metz, France,
takes its name from
husband-and-wife
founders Ava and Mat
Loz. The pair met at
university and worked
at big IT companies
before deciding to mix
work and play five
years ago. “I’m doing
everything,” jokes Ava,
“and he spends most
of his time telling me
I’m beautiful when
I work.” Until Covid,
Lozange specialised in
interactive installations.
“It benefits our games
because it helps us
keep in touch with
what people enjoy,”
Ava says. “With
installations, people
will try things that
they may not try
otherwise, and will
more often than not
find something they
like. They just live in
the moment. We try
to surprise and
delight as many
people as we can.”Despite the wry commentary,
this makes for a relaxing
meditation on capitalism