Game Review - Sneaky Sasquatch
By RAC7 Games
The Joys and Failures of Cryptozoological, Late Stage Capitalism
This is a not entirely accurate, synoptical account of a conversation that I sort of had with my kids over the course of two weeks a while ago about this game they keep on playing. I’ve only played the game a couple of times and when I did all’s I did was go fishing for some reason.
“Sasquatch needs to get a job.”
“Why? You are Sasquatch. You don’t need a job.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“I need to put money on the bank card.”
“Why?”
“To buy things.”
“Like what?”
“I think I have to buy a car.”
“You don’t need a car, you have the golf cart and you already hired the ducks to drive the golf cart back to your cabin when you have to do other things. Also it looks like you can just steal cars and nobody seems to do anything about it.”
“I think I need to put the money on the card.”
“You already have racoon money1. Look you just paid for a new outfit before with the racoon money. The card will not help Sasquatch.”
—
A few days later
“We got him a bank account?”
“Why?”
“He can buy golf clubs now!”
“Golf sucks. He can do things in the forest and you figured out a way to ski for free and even earn racoon coins doing jumps. You eat for free out of the rubbish. Why do you need a bank account and golf? Why aren’t you skiing? Sasquatch can not only ski but he can earn money skiing? He’s pro! This is the best thing ever. The only better would be if he could be a professional skateboarder. Why golf clubs?”
“I don’t remember. It’s sort of fun.”
And that was that. I’m not sure what Marx, Žižek (represent, whoop whoop), Keynes or Adam Smith would say about it, but I could see the insidiousness of markets, incentives and super cuteness all at work, seeping into their eyes through the screen. They were dragged smiling, not kicking and screaming, into a world of commerce and value exchange reductiveness. It made me want to cry. But it’s super cute and fun to play otherwise. I give it four stars.
There are in fact many competing currencies in Sneaky Sasquatch, one of which are coins with a Racoon’s face on it. These are not somehow exchangeable with the regular currency which has no name ↩︎