Blippo+ is for the People

We made a video game, and it's out now — in full color!

Boing boing, friends! We’re in your inbox with a brief but potent missive to inform you that our video game, Blippo+, is out now on Steam and Nintendo Switch!

“But YACHT,” you may be protesting, “aren’t you merely a band???”

Indeed. But for the last five-odd years this band has been hard at work — to be fully transparent, often perilously so — on an epic pivot to video games. And although we have made albums, books, public art happenings, several apps, installations, a documentary film and a laundry list of weird physical items, nothing could have fully equipped us for the scope of that undertaking. You’ll see why when you play it.

Blippo+ is a live-action cable TV simulator that connects Earthling viewers to the finest entertainment in the galaxy. Playing it consists of channel-flipping through hours and hours of alien television — and, over time, discovering the hidden story unfolding between the channels. It’s a love letter to the radical history of television, a time-capsule of Los Angeles’ art underground, and 5-plus-hour science fiction movie disguised as a video game. We made it with video artist and director JJ Stratford, whose own Telefantasy Studios is an intergalactic outpost here on Earth, and a crew of extremely talented weirdos — including over 100 actors, musicians, artists, comedians, dancers, and performers. Claire wrote every word, Jona designed every graphic and screen (among infinite other jobs, as creative director); together we built the color version with Twin Cities-based game developer Mark LaCroix. You can peep the full credits for a sense of the scale of this thing.

The whole wild, wonderful result is available on Steam and Switch with a 10% off launch discount for the first two weeks, so if you cop it now, you save a little money.

Early reviews are trickling in. ScreenRant scored it a 9/10 and called it:

“simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic, otherworldly yet welcoming…an absolute artistic triumph.”

Paste also scored it a 9/10 and called it:

“almost always absurd and fundamentally ridiculous.”

Inverse (doesn’t score) called it:

“one of the most inventive games of the year, and one of the funniest games ever made.”

We’ll take it!

“But YACHT,” you may by now be wondering, “you are still a band though, right?”

Don’t fret. The 137-song-strong soundtrack to Blippo+ is a YACHT joint — a dizzying tour through an entire planet’s TV tuneage composed by our very own Rob and Jona. The Blippo+ soundtrack is now available on Bandcamp, Steam, and Itch.

We’ve also submitted the soundtrack to streamers, but the streaming platforms are having a hard time ingesting an album with 137 songs that feature fictional in-game bands. Normies! It’ll be available to stream on your platform of choice soon.

Anyway — have at it, players. Enjoy Planet Blip. We built this new world to welcome all refugees from media mediocrity. Dust off your remote and tune in!

Sliming off,
Claire, Jona and Rob

PS - Please leave us a review on Steam! It really, really helps us out.