As a fidgety youngster, I often had to be told to stop making funny faces, drawing on walls, and (perhaps most often) playing with my food. Constant culinary rearrangement is still an impulse I struggle against, which is why Ian MacLarty's new experimental computer game, Full English Breakfast, is so appealing: for the express purpose of making art, the designer encourages, and actually requires you to play with food.
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This so-called "breakfast simulator" is a small, downloadable file which opens on a tantalizing picture of the titular "full English breakfast" of fried eggs, toast, sausage, bacon, and beans. The player wields a fork like it's the smudge tool in Photoshop, warping the picturesque breakfast in a way that's reminiscent of My Little Pixel Pusher. A tap of the space bar reveals a knife, which functions like a rudimentary clone stamp, "pushing" pixels around in small sections at a time. From abstract portraits to a stylized egg-and-bacon solar system, a smorgasbord of possibilities can be created by acting like a messy eater.Enjoy artworks created in Full English Breakfast below, and head over to the official website to try it out for yourself.
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