Mystic Stickup has a plan to solve crime…with hypnotism
You’re walking down an alley alone at night when a hoodlum—a hoodlum with exposed biceps, no less!—demands that you hand over your money. What do you do? The obvious answer is to just hand over the money. It isn’t worth risking your life for a small portion of your net worth. But, as a million Batman origin stories have demonstrated, compliance with thieves’ demands cannot guarantee your survival. There must be a better way.
Compliance with thieves’ demands cannot guarantee your survival.
Beardo Games’ Mystic Stickup provides dapper, mustachioed hypnotists with an alternate solution to the mugging problem. The game, which has been entered in the 32nd Ludum Dare game jam, challenges you to swing an amulet in front of your antagonist. Swing it quickly enough and the hypnotized robber will let you go free. Swing it too slowly and the petty criminal will punch you in the face and take your money. Hypnotism is hard. If that weren’t the case, everyone would already be using Mystic Stickup’s solution to urban crime. Thus, it’s not so easy to swing the amulet back and forth. Two keys on your keyboard control it, but those keys keep on changing. Saving your wallet is a job for professional hypnotists and professional hypnotists alone.
And so it is that Mystic Stickup is the world’s mellowest typing test. As the amulet swings back and forth, letters appear at the top of the screen and your fingers race to them. Moreover, the threat of being punched in the face, as represented by the robber’s slowly moving arm, is a more effective motivational tool than any computer teacher has ever devised. Would this technique actually lower crime rates? Probably not, but considering the many crime-stopping products on the market—whistles, pepper spray, truncheons—you probably couldn’t do that much better than swinging an amulet. Nevertheless, you should probably stick to using Mystic Stickup on your computer. It’s plenty of fun and there’s no risk of getting punched in the face.
