Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015 Review

“What?” “Really?” I can hear you ask. “What the hell is this?” asks another. True, this is an absolutely bizarre game, with a premise that can easily be misconstrued. But, things aren’t always what they seem. If you open this book, you’ll find the cover doesn’t give you nearly enough information to come to a conclusion. This pool is both shallow, and deep.

PROS: A surprisingly deep puzzle game, with a load of content. Dark comedy.

CONS: Premise will make some uncomfortable. Dark comedy.

MULTI-TRICK PONY: This could have easily been a one-joke distraction. But it isn’t.

Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015 came out two years ago, and instantly got under the skin of many. The theme of the game, really is just centered around bathing. But with no other information upon the release, people were put off. It’s easy to see why. But, this game manages to skirt by with its shock value, and dark humor.

Oddly enough, that’s because the game delivers much more than that. It’s shocking yes. It wears its absurdity on its sleeve like a badge of pride. But once you get over the hurdle of actually installing it, and booting it, there’s a solid, fun game to be found underneath the joke. And throughout that game, it throws in a lot more humor. And just when you think it’s about to beat a dead horse, it rides in with an entirely new horse, making jokes that have nothing to do with communal showers.

The base game mode is a match-up puzzle game. You start out by choosing one of three Father, and Son duos. The game begins, and as the son, you have to find your father before the time runs out. If you can do that, you’ll add more time to the clock, and do it again. This cycle repeats until you mess up, and choose the wrong parent. Basically, you’re shooting for a high score. But it doesn’t end there. As you do better, new things are added to the game. You’ll find bars of soap that double your score. Other power-ups are unlocked as you improve. There’s a razor that shaves the fathers’ heads. There’s a pair of water wings, that don’t do much of anything. You can even find giant mugs of craft beer, that make the game harder as they affect your movement.

Beyond these power-ups, the game begins to throw in obstacles to mess you up. Wet floor signs, you can bruise your legs on. Which will slow you down for a few seconds. Water puddles that make you slip, and slide randomly if you touch them. Often into the wrong dad, and getting you a Game Over screen. Persevering only makes the game do more to thwart your attempt at a high score. Putting curtains over the fathers after a split-second so you may potentially guess wrong. Adding more fathers that look similar to the one you’re supposed to meet up with, so you’ll pick the doppelgänger instead, and lose.

The second mode is a variant where each time you meet up with your dad, you’re given the role of a different child. This makes the game even harder. There’s a third mode where the dads fall from the top of the screen, and you have to grab the correct father based on the child you’re cast as. In this mode you use the mouse to stretch your hand out, and move with the arrow keys.

But the game doesn’t end with these solid puzzle games. Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015, has a bunch of hidden mini games you’ll unlock over the course of your play time. Some of these are even weirder than the base game. One of them is a gritty, film-noir themed point, and click adventure game. The story centering on a broken shower in a police station. This one even finds time to make jokes about the genre in addition to the shower, and bathing puns. Another one has you going up against a ninja, and his five sons, while another mini game is a shmup, where you pilot a bathtub. The latter of which involves shooting down other tubs, while trying to fly your own tub in the style of Flappy Bird.

For a budget title, built around a joke, the game has a lot of effort thrown in. The simple graphic style still incorporates a lot of small details. Streaks on the floor when you hit one of the puddles. Wet floor signs, falling over when you bump into them. The visual effects when you get a power-up. This even goes on when going into one of the unlockable mini games, or even the Commodore 64 lampoon when booting the game. The music in it isn’t too bad either.

Sometimes something comes along so weird, so strange it has to be seen to be believed. It’s even rarer when that thing, has good gameplay underneath all of that mystifying oddity. Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015 is one of those things. If you can get around the absurdity of it all, you’ll have a fun time with it. It isn’t very long, but it is fun in short bursts, and those short bursts can add up quickly.

Final Score: 8 out of 10