Wash Your Hands! Men’s Room Mayhem Coming to PS Vita

Hi PlayStation.Blog fans! My name is Phil Gaskell, I’ve worked on games such as Super Stardust HD, and Dead Nation. These days I run an indie publisher called Ripstone. We helped teams like Voofoo Studios launch Pure Chess last year, and more recently Big Sky Infinity and Knytt Underground. We love indies and we love PS Vita, and I can’t wait to share with you some of the awesome shizzle we’re working on this year!

Today though I’m very proud to announce a game we made together with Sawfly Studios, a team of talented guys who are ex-Studio Liverpool. The game is called Men’s Room Mayhem, and as you can probably guess from the title it takes toilet gaming to a whole new level! If I had to sum it up in a single sentence I’d say it’s like Flight Control meets Carry On At Your Convenience!

In Men’s Room Mayhem you’re hired as the janitor of your very own chaotic men’s room. You’re responsible for directing patrons, keeping everywhere sparkling clean and steering patrons away from trouble! You need to get your customers safely to the urinals and cubicles in time – otherwise there’ll be a few nasty accidents for you to clean up! Avoid fights by strategically steering patrons past each other with pinpoint precision, but be careful, as the waves increase the patrons pile up fast – so mind your pees and queues! (did you see what I did there?). All this is done using simple line drawing gestures on PS Vita’s 5″ touch screen.

Extra points are scored for maintaining proper men’s room etiquette as well as for demonstrating good personal hygiene. And this links to nicely to how I came up with the idea for Men’s Room Mayhem. It really comes from the whole notion of there being men’s room etiquette. Like most good ideas it started with several pints of ale at a local bar with my friends. When I inevitably went to point percy at the porcelain I had a moment of clarity. I realised I was subconsciously following a set of rules for using the little boy’s room. If there was nobody in there I used the urinal furthest from the door, I always left a gap of one urinal between me and anyone else in there and if I couldn’t leave a gap I used the cubicle!

Nobody ever taught me this, not my Dad or my friends, it was a set of behaviors I picked up over time — or perhaps it’s more deep-rooted than that (the boffins would say it’s connected to our prehistoric ancestors and being at our most vulnerable when we’re doing our business). This sort of psychology fascinates me, so I thought it might be fun to make a game of it – partly to see how many other guys don’t realize they follow the rules, and partly to let all the ladies know us fellas have a certain code of conduct in our washrooms too y’know!

Stay tuned for some more screenshots and details on the game as well as the launch date and the price. You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook for updates too. Until then, just remember to wash your hands!