Safety First!

Safety First! is a physics-based puzzle game where players assume the role of an engineer tasked with fixing broken electrical cables using Magical Yellow Repair Liquid. The unique control scheme involves independently moving each foot to position the character, whose body follows floppy, skeletal dynamics governed by gravity and momentum, with inaccurate movements resulting in gory dismemberment. Levels feature moving mechanisms and require precise liquid management, complemented by unlockable chaotic modes like ‘DRNK’ and ‘SCHSSE’ that add visual wobbles and altered audio.

Safety First!: Review

Introduction: A Pee-condoddling Paradox

In the vast and often sanitized landscape of video game protagonists, one hero stands apart—not for his grand quest, noble armor, or tragic backstory, but for the uniquely ludicrous and physically exacting manner in which he performs his duty: by peeing. Safety First! (2015) is a game that announces its absurdist core in its title and premise. You are an electrician tasked with repairing broken cables using “Magical Yellow Repair Liquid” (MYRL), deployed via an appendage that leaves little to the imagination. Developed almost single-handedly by Jan C. Obergfell-Bourmer (jco) and published by Headup Games, this twin-stick physics puzzler is an exercise in contrasts: it is both a meticulously engineered physics simulation and a celebration of juvenile, slapstick failure. It is a game that garnered a paltry 36% average from critics yet holds a respectable 3.4/5 from players on MobyGames. This review will argue that Safety First! is less a “good” game in conventional terms and more a fascinating, flawed artifact of the indie and demoscene ethos—a title whose value lies not in polish or narrative depth, but in the pure, agonizing, and hilarious physical comedy of its core mechanical joke.

Development History & Context: From Demoscene to Dubious eShop Staple

The Creator and the Vision: Safety First! is the product of Jan C. Obergfell-Bourmer, operating under the moniker JCO. According to MobyGames and corroborated by the game’s own credits, JCO served as the sole developer, handling code, music, sound effects, and graphics. This is the quintessential “auteur” indie project, born from a singular, uncompromising vision. The game’s origin is explicitly tied to the demoscene, as noted by its “Revision demoparty 2015 – Game competition: 1st place” award listed on MobyGames. This context is crucial; demoscene projects prioritize technical Showcase, clever programming, and subversive humor within tight constraints. Safety First! fits this lineage perfectly: its physics engine is its star, and its premise is a gross-out spectacle designed to shock and amuse a audience steeped in computer culture.

Technological Constraints and Design Philosophy: Built in the Unity engine, the game’s “rigid-body dynamics” for all objects—the player character, environmental hazards, and the MYRL stream—are its central technical and gameplay pillar. The choice of a side-view, 2D perspective with physics-based movement (reminiscent of QWOP or Octodad) was likely a practical one for a solo developer, allowing complex simulation without the overhead of 3D. The control scheme—using dual analog sticks to independently control the character’s feet—is an evolution of this “difficult locomotion” genre, moving beyond simple button-mashing to require nuanced, simultaneous input. The decision to make dismemberment a frequent and gruesome failure state is a direct descendant of the demoscene’s love for visceral, over-the-top payoff.

The Gaming Landscape of 2015-2019: Released initially for Windows, Linux, and Mac in April 2015, the game later found a controversial home on the Nintendo Switch eShop in 2019 (published by Headup Games). This late console port is telling. The mid-to-late 2010s saw Nintendo’s Switch eShop embrace a wildly open policy, becoming a repository for everything from acclaimed indies to low-fidelity “asset flip” games and bizarre curiosities. Safety First! epitomizes this latter category. Its arrival on a mainstream platform curated by Nintendo—known historically for stricter content policies—sparked articles like Nintendo Life’s “Dubious eShop Game Safety First Puts The ‘Pee’ In Puzzler,” which highlighted the cognitive dissonance of a family-friendly storefront hosting a game so blatantly focused on urination humor. Its placement alongside titles like Warioware (in spirit) and Goat Simulator places it within a niche of “intentionally stupid” physics sandbox games, but with a far more狭窄 and mechanically demanding focus.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: The Story of a Puddle

Plot and Characters: In any traditional sense, Safety First! has no narrative. There is no Joshua Washington plotting revenge, no Blackwood Mountain wendigo legend, no branching storylines shaped by butterfly-effect choices. The “plot,” as delivered in the game’s sole cutscene and store descriptions, is a throwaway justification: “Your grandma turned her vintage radio up too much and caused lots of cables to break in the nearby power plant.” You, an unnamed, featureless stick-figure electrician, must fix them. The character is an empty vessel; a collection of limbs and a nozzle. The only “character” with agency is the MYRL itself, a substance repeatedly, pedantically defined as not urine.

Themes and Underlying Ideas: The genius and the limitation of Safety First! are that its theme is its mechanic. The thematic core is the profound difficulty and absurdity of performing even simple tasks under extreme physical duress and public scrutiny. Every failed attempt, every severed limb, every wasted drop of MYRL is a slapstick vignette about incompetence, fragility, and the humor of bodily failure. The game doesn’t satirize workplace safety manuals (Safety First!); it creates a workplace where the primary hazard is your own uncontrollable body. The “Drunken” (DRNK) and “SCHSSE” modes (the latter featuring German swearing and a brownish “ejecta” from the band Cell Necrosis) double down on this, framing the act not as professional duty but as a messy, inebriated, and anarchic spree. The theme is pure, unadulterated catharsis through failure. There is no growth, no revelation, no emotional catharsis like in Until Dawn or The Last of Us. The only “story” is the one the player writes through a hundred individual moments ofrage and laughter.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Joystick

Core Gameplay Loop: The loop is brutally simple: enter a level, assess the broken cables and obstacles, use precise foot placement to maneuver the stick-figure body, and squirt MYRL onto the wire breaks from the correct angle and distance, all while conserving a limited supply. The challenge derives from the interlocking systems of control and physics.
1. Dual-Stick Locomotion: Each analog stick controls one foot. Pushing a stick moves that foot relative to the body. The body is a ragdoll chain: move a foot, the knee, hip, torso, and head follow in a floppy, momentum-driven simulation. This is where the QWOP comparison is apt but insufficient; Safety First! adds a critical third dimension of gravity and environmental interaction. The character is perpetually at risk of toppling, stretching limbs to their breaking point (literally), or being crushed by moving platforms.
2. MYRL Application: Pressing the ‘A’ button (or equivalent) ejects MYRL. The stream is subject to gravity and has a limited range. Spilling it on the ground wastes precious resources. Running out means suicide (a button press that causes the body to grotesquely explode).
3. Failure States: The game is merciless. A leg stretched too far snaps off. A fall from too great a height shatters the body. A crushing trap eviscerates you. Each failure is accompanied by a distinct, often comically gory, sound effect and visual. After ten failures, the game cynically offers a skip, branding you a “cheater” on the level select screen—a fantastic piece of meta-commentary.

Innovation and Flaws: The innovation is the purity of its “difficult movement” puzzle design. Unlike games where control awkwardness is a bug, here it is the entire feature. The puzzles require planning the sequence of foot placements, often involving one-footed “hops” in the Advanced campaign. The physics are deterministic enough to be fair with practice, but the precision required is extreme.

However, the system is fundamentally flawed in its execution. As noted by eShopperReviews, the movement model is “floaty” and reality-deficient: “When you move one foot in the air, it moves up, and when you move both legs, they both move up, along with your character’s body, almost as if he was wearing jet boots.” This breaks physical intuition, making the already difficult control scheme feel arbitrary and unfair. The MYRL application is also hampered by a lack of fine-tuned aiming and a punishing resource limit that doesn’t account for the learning curve of aligning the nozzle. The result, as the GamingTrend review states, is “an exercise in frustration.” The “PEP” (faster) and “DRNK” (wobbly) modes exacerbate these issues, transforming challenge into punitive RNG gauntlets, as complained about by Steam user “XoXeLo” regarding the “Up and Down” level in DRNK mode.

Progression and UI: Progression is linear through three campaigns: Classic (30 levels), Advanced (32 levels, with the “one foot must stay grounded” rule), and Space (zero-gravity). Unlocking DRNK (after 10 levels) and SCHSSE (after 20) modes provides variation that feels more like a punishment than a reward. The UI is minimalist to a fault—a simple HUD showing MYRL remaining and level objectives. Its bare-bones nature aligns with the demoscene aesthetic but offers little handholding.

World-Building, Art & Sound: Stick Figures and Sonic Mayhem

Visual Direction: The art style is primitive, consisting almost entirely of black stick figures on stark, single-color backgrounds (often grey or brown). Environments are simple geometric shapes—platforms, ladders, wires, pistons. There is no “world” to speak of, only puzzle chambers. This minimalism serves two purposes: it keeps the focus squarely on the physics of the character and the task, and it reinforces the game’s origin as a technical demo. The occasional dismemberment is rendered with crude, blocky gore—a red square here, a severed limb there—which, due to the abstract style, feels more cartoonish than shocking. The “SCHSSE” mode’s “browner form of ejecta” is a perfect example of this aesthetic: a simple palette swap for a crude joke.

Sound Design and Music: This is where the game’s personality truly shines, thanks entirely to JCO’s work. The sound design is exquisitely tuned for comedy and feedback. The sound of MYRL hitting a wire is a satisfying squelch. The sound of a limb snapping is a sharp, wet crack followed by a pained scream. The sound of falling is a descending whoosh and a bone-rattling thud. Every auditory cue is clear, distinct, and frequently hilarious.

The interactive soundtrack is another demoscene hallmark. The music dynamically shifts based on action: a tense, rhythmic tune plays during normal operation, which may escalate or change when MYRL is low or a trap is triggered. The SCHSSE mode’s soundtrack, provided by JCO’s band Cell Necrosis, replaces this with a track of “electronic fith deathcore doom death brutal metal,” a genre description so specific and ridiculous it must be heard to be believed. This audio contrast between the clinical task and the aggressive, drunken metal is the game’s most successful comedic juxtaposition.

Reception & Legacy: A Cult Curiosity in the Age of the eShop

Critical Reception: The critical response was almost universally negative, as reflected in the 36% aggregate from the two critics listed on MobyGames (Video Chums: 40%, eShopperReviews: 33%). Reviews consistently cite the same flaws: “irritiating gameplay” (Video Chums), “broken gameplay” and “bare bones presentation” (eShopperReviews), “floaty physics” and “unfair difficulty” (GamingTrend). The core conceit, while initially laugh-out-loud funny, is not considered a sustainable foundation for a full-priced experience. The controls are repeatedly described as a “fight” against the game itself.

Player Reception: The disconnect is stark. Player ratings on MobyGames average 3.4/5. Steam community discussions are mixed but reveal a dedicated niche. Players share strategies, laugh at failure GIFs, and proudly post screenshots of their completed “100%” runs. The game’s difficulty is framed not as a flaw but as a badge of honor. The option to skip levels after ten failures is both a concession to frustration and a hilarious in-joke. The community embraces the game’s sheer absurdity and the masochistic satisfaction of finally conquering a brutally precise puzzle. As one Steam user commented, “I got it. It doesn’t run at 60 fps, but close. It’s also kinda fun. It also has more than pee jokes.” They acknowledge the jank but find charm in it.

Legacy and Influence: Safety First! has no discernible influence on major industry trends. It did not spawn clones or redefine a genre. Its legacy is that of a demoscene curio that achieved cult status via digital storefronts. It exists in the same conversation as Goat Simulator or I Am Bread as a game whose primary value is its bizarre concept and the YouTube/streamer content that emerges from it. Its 2019 Switch port, while controversial for seemingly passing Nintendo’s certification, cemented its status as a “so-bad-it’s-good” or “so-weird-it’s-interesting” staple. It will be remembered not for its storytelling (which is nil), but as a testament to the idea that a game can be built entirely around a single, ridiculous, physically-based joke—and that for a certain audience, that is enough. It is the antithesis of narrative-heavy, choice-driven experiences like Until Dawn; where Until Dawn asks “What would you do?,” Safety First! asks, with malicious glee, “Can you even make this stick figure pee in a straight line?”

Conclusion: A Flawed Masterpiece of Physical Comedy

Safety First! is not a “good” game by any standard metric of design polish, narrative cohesion, or accessibility. Its controls are clunky, its difficulty curve is brutal and often unfair, its art is rudimentary, and its story is an afterthought. By the criteria laid out in reviews of celebrated titles like The Last of Us or Disco Elysium, it is a failure.

And yet, to dismiss it entirely is to miss its unique, if limited, triumph. It is a perfect realization of a specific, absurdist vision. It understands that the humor of physical comedy—the classic trope of someone slipping on a banana peel—derives from a gap between intention and outcome. Safety First! weaponizes this by making the player’s own hands the source of the pratfall. Every time your character’s leg stretches an inch too far and pops off, or your MYRL stream arcs wildly off-target, the game isn’t glitching; it is faithfully simulating the consequences of your clumsy input. The laughter it generates is a complex mix of schadenfreude, surprise, and the dawning realization of your own motor ineptitude.

Its place in video game history is not alongside the canonized greats of storytelling. It is instead a vital piece of the medium’s outsider art collection. It is a game that could only exist as an indie passion project, unburdened by focus groups or genre expectations. It serves as a direct link to the demoscene’s spirit of technical showmanship wrapped in cheeky provocation. For scholars of game design, it is a fascinating case study in “misery娱乐” (misery-software) and the gamification of physical struggle. For players, it is a bizarre, frustrating, and intermittently hilarious experience that asks a simple question: how much punishment can you take for the sake of fixing a cartoon wire? The answer, for the 52 players collected on MobyGames and the curious few who buy it on a Switch sale, is apparently quite a lot.

Final Verdict: Safety First! is a 2.5/5 star experience—a deeply flawed, narrowly focused, and brilliantly stupid game that earns its cult status through sheer, unadulterated id. It is not essential, but it is unforgettable. It is the video game equivalent of a shocking, gross, and weirdly clever party trick: you’ll cringe, you’ll laugh, you’ll get pee (metaphorically) on your shoes, and you’ll certainly have a story to tell. And in its own twisted way, that’s a kind of safety.