Vent your anger on those who break the rules while picking up free wagyu beef and masks from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe along the way.
Japan, like many other countries around the world, is currently encouraging people to practice social distancing in order to stop the spread of coronavirus. Infuriatingly, though, like our overseas counterparts, there are still people who aren’t keeping a recommended distance of two metres (six feet) between each other.
Those who don’t keep their distance can make any trip outdoors a stressful one for others, but here to rescue us with some stress relief is a new social distancing game that lets us do what we’d love to do in real life — push people out of the way.
Created by aspiring game maker and Twitter user @miseromisero, this game has both an English version called “Social Distance” and a Japanese version called “Mitsu Desu”.
In the English version, you play as a yellow-headed certain someone, and by clicking on the screen you can push people away from you with an assertive “Social Distance“. Crowds become more dense and persistent in their proximity as you progress through different levels of the game.
Players begin the game with five masks, seen at the bottom right of the screen, and each time you allow someone to come into contact with you, one of them disappears. Don’t worry, though – Prime Minister Abe appears sporadically to revive players with a new mask, as a nod to his two-mask-per-household distribution scheme.
There are also chances to pick up some fish and wagyu beef, which references the government proposal to provide people with these foodstuffs as a way to soften the negative effects of the coronavirus on the economy.
The gameplay is the same for the Japanese version, only with Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike pushing people out of the way. Each click sounds out a “Mitsu Desu“, with mitsu (density) being the buzzword used by government reps here, as a warning to avoid densely crowded environments.
The game has been so well received it’s even inspired another game maker to create another “Mitsu Desu” game of their own, this time with a mayor that can fly through the air and break up groups of people on the streets of America.
At the end of the original “Mitsu Desu” game, Koike can be heard saying, “ouchi ni ite kudasai” (“please stay home”), and with the game being played and shared widely online, here’s hoping that message gets through to more and more people around the country.
Related: Mitsu Desu Game (Japanese), Social Distance Game (English)
Source: Twitter/@miseromisero via Twitter/@motulo
Featured image: Twitter/@sugoi831
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