AppMonday: Please Don’t Touch Anything

Have you ever had one of those days where everything goes wrong? This game is about that, and ignoring instructions.

A recent title that you can find on pretty much every major computing platform, mobile or otherwise, “Please Don’t Touch Anything” is a game about memorisation and ignoring the most basic instruction of not touching anything.

The game starts with you being left at a fairly large electronic console, and with one button being available to you, or so you think.

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The guy who normally operates this machine has to go to the bathroom, and you’re being entrusted with keeping watch over it, there’s just one thing: don’t touch anything.

Please don’t touch anything.

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You can abide by this instruction if you like, or you can totally ignore it and start pressing on things, and if we were you, we’d do that because that’s where the fun comes from this game. The frustrating memory-heavy fun.

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The bulk of the gameplay in “Please Don’t Touch Anything” leverages interpretation of what you see around you, with signs, stickers, and notes generally leading you to the right thing, while objects and what you can do with those objects making up the other half of what you’re doing.

In essence, the game is about experimentation and then memorisation, as you frustratingly press buttons, break objects, and do everything you can to not necessarily press that button until everything has been done right.

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Remember, you’ve been asked not to touch anything, and so the most minor move could result in the end of humanity.

What will result, though, is you touching a bunch of things and replaying the game several times, and that’s also the part of the point, because you’ll be finding every ending that you can.

Good work. You killed everything.
Good work. You killed everything.

We don’t want to spill too much, either, because it’s definitely one of the more creative head scratchers we’ve played with in a while, but with over 20 endings, you’ll need to touch lots to things in order to see what happens, and remember what you’re doing if you think you’re going the right way.

Strangely, this is one of those games that really gets under your skin, because it’s both smart and quite frustrating, almost like it’s a title that intentionally beats you over the head with both a rubber screwdriver and a hard hammer, just because it can.

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It’s fun and frustrating and yet still playful enough that you’ll feel like you’re solving a super creative puzzle the entire time.

Or you could just not touch anything, but where’s the fun in that?

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Please Don’t Touch Anything is available now for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Android phones and tablets, and for both Mac OS X and Windows.

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