Have you been feeling alien lately? Like nobody will listen to you? Then brighten up because Speaking Simulator provides some relief from that social anxiety! Control a robot’s attempts to flap lips, gums, teeth, and tongue in the strange symphony we call conversation.
From developer and publisher, Affable Games, Speaking Simulator is a game that boils down to a wonky-controller comedy where discordant inputs form funny combinations. If anybody is reminded of QWOP, they should be, because Speaking Simulator is derivative. And when iconic games are sadly chopped and skewered for a quick profit, for the hell of remodeling an old idea into a new one, or for no good reason at all then everybody loses.
Pushing the Buttons, but Missing the Point…
In my first few missions of gameplay, I’m not going to lie, I was laughing right along with the hilarious pronunciations coming from my overloaded mechanic scramblings. A few missions quickly turned into a few too many, though, as the recurrent game loops lost their replayability, the jokes lost their teeth, and my overall experience turned from novel enjoyment to grating annoyance.
Primarily, the reason Speaking Simulator has such a limited enjoyability is its premise–that playing a game with wonky controls will be fun. I don’t think I’ve come across a game with quite as horrendous controls than Speaking Simulator. To quickly illustrate, one of the main gameplay mechanics splits your screen into two: the left a tongue moving minigame; the right a mouth moving minigame. On the left, WASD arrow keys are used to drag a wonky-physics tongue to its correct resting place; on the right, you use the mouse to drag the mouth up, down, left, or right. Sound completely backward to you? Playing it through with a mouse and keyboard certainly did, and I’m honestly not sure if they made it like that on purpose to overload the player even further with impossible commands.
QWOP is a successful and iconic game because it is satirizing precisely what Speaking Simulator falls into. A free-to-play, joke of a flash game, with only 1 level to beat stands tall above every other wonky controller game not only because it is the original, but because it makes a statement about games without asking too much of the player. QWOP doesn’t ask its players to have fun, QWOP doesn’t pretend there is merit to its meaninglessness, and QWOP doesn’t demand a $15 price point for essentially a joke. Speaking Simulator, on the other hand, proposes that it is fun, there is a point, and that it does deserve a $15 paywall, and for that, it falls short.
Final Verdict
In short, Speaking Simulator is a misguided comedy failing to achieve much with its wonky controls. There’s a lack of replayability, lack of character customization, lack of online community support, and it costs $15 for what could be a flash game of the early 2000s. If you’re looking for a few hours of amusing nonsense, then go ahead and pick up Speaking Simulator.
Score: 5.5
Check Out the Speaking Simulator Trailer:
Speaking Simulator is available for PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch.
For more information, please visit: https://www.affablegames.com/
Steam Review
Recent Michigan State University grad and current Game Studies researcher who plays fantasy RPG's to escape, Smash to compete, and Stardew to chill. Also have a +1 to rage/toxicity resistance due to the many hours sunk into WoW, R6, and LoL.
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