Imagine your manly sporting class has just finished, and everybody—including that hunk you often admire—makes their way to the showers. What if… he asked you to help reach his back?
The hunk wears sunglasses in the shower and insists on calling you "pal" and "bro" even as you apparently enjoy an intimate minefield together. Immediately, Robert Yang's Rinse and Repeat makes you consider subtext and safety in this vulnerable public space. But perhaps the most interesting thing about the game is that to make "progress" with your shower buddy, you often have to wait in real time until "after class".
One of the first things you notice when you log into the game is a procedurally-generated schedule (macho classes with random names like "blood aerobics" and "combat yoga")—your first time, you have an hour after class to enjoy shower time with your hunk, and after that, you need to wait until the next day.
The waiting is effective at creating a sense of anticipation—imagine if you really were hoping for the chance to knock at the door of intimacy with someone, one gym class at a time? The days and hours would seem interminable. But on his developer blog, Yang says that as a game mechanic, waiting is inherently submissive, and in that respect Rinse and Repeat is something like a subversion of his spanking game Hurt Me Plenty (read about it here).
Yang's whole considered process on Rinse and Repeat, from the water technology to the player's own body, is worth reading, but it contains spoilers, so try to finish the game yourself first. We also loved Yang's dick pics and surveillance game Cobra Club, which made our list of the 5 best uses of a mobile phone in video games.
Rinse and Repeat is available here for free or suggested $5 donation.
