Adventures of Pipi

Adventures of Pipi is a side-scrolling platformer where players control Pipi, an alien whose ship crashes on the strange planet of Vapeland. To find his way home, Pipi must navigate 20 levels filled with obstacles, collect vapes and spinners, and avoid enemies like roosters, Cthulhu, and pikes, all set to a relaxing soundtrack.

Adventures of Pipi: A Historical Autopsy of a Digital Curiosity

In the vast, uncurated library of digital storefronts, every so often, a title emerges not as a masterpiece of design or a beacon of innovation, but as a fascinating artifact of its time—a perfect storm of low-cost development, meme culture, and the raw, unfiltered accessibility of modern game distribution. Adventures of Pipi is one such artifact. Developed by Nikita “GhostRUS” and published by GhostRUS Games in late 2017, this side-scrolling platformer exists in a peculiar space: it is a game that is both utterly of its moment and entirely forgettable, a paradox that makes it a compelling subject for historical analysis.

Development History & Context

The One-Man Band and the Steam Gold Rush
Adventures of Pipi was born in the era of the “indiepocalypse,” a period marked by the saturation of digital marketplaces like Steam with a deluge of low-budget, often hastily assembled titles. The developer, operating under the handle “Ghost_RUS,” appears to be a solo creator or a very small team, emblematic of a new class of developer empowered by accessible tools like GameMaker Studio or Unity, and a distribution platform with, at the time, increasingly relaxed curation standards.

The game’s technological footprint is minuscule: a 50 MB download that can run on a Windows XP machine with a 1.2 GHz processor and 256 MB of VRAM. This is not a game pushing technical boundaries; it is a game exploiting the lowest possible barrier to entry. Its creation was likely a swift process, a hypothesis supported by the sheer volume of titles attributed to Ghost_RUS Games on Steam. The vision, as stated, was simple: create a “cheerful shooter with a user-friendly gameplay in an original setting.” The reality, as we shall see, is far more complex and less cheerful.

The gaming landscape of late 2017 was also the peak of specific internet meme cycles. The game’s key collectibles—vapes and spinners—are direct references to the fidget spinner craze and vaping culture that dominated online discourse in the mid-to-late 2010s. This was not a game designed with timelessness in mind; it was designed to be immediately recognizable and marketable to a very online, meme-literate audience, however niche.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

A Plot of Absurdist Convenience
The narrative framework of Adventures of Pipi is threadbare, serving only as the faintest justification for its gameplay. An alien named Pipi crash-lands on the bizarrely named “Vapeland” and must find his way home. The story exists in the classic arcade tradition of minimal setup, but here it feels less like a purposeful design choice and more like an afterthought.

The true “narrative” is not found in the plot but in the game’s surreal and jarring iconography. Pipi is confronted not by a coherent enemy force but by a random assortment of obstacles: roosters, Cthulhu, pikes. There is no lore explaining the existence of a Lovecraftian deity on a planet obsessed with vaping paraphernalia. This is not world-building; it is a collage of internet in-jokes and random assets. The themes, therefore, are not of adventure or exploration, but of pure, unadulterated absurdity. It is a game that embraces the nonsensical nature of its own creation, reflecting a postmodern, almost Dadaist approach to game design where coherence is sacrificed at the altar of momentary recognition and humor.

The achievement names further this theme. Unlocking achievements called “Weed,” “Smoke,” “KEK,” and “LGBT Pipi” signals a developer deeply embedded in the specific, often controversial, dialect of online forum culture. The game’s narrative and thematic core is its meme-centric identity.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

A Loop of Frustration and Satire
On paper, Adventures of Pipi is a straightforward 2D platformer. It features 20 levels where the player must jump, avoid enemies and traps, and collect the key items: vapes and spinners. In execution, it becomes something else entirely.

Player reviews consistently describe a game plagued by fundamental flaws. The controls are repeatedly cited as being unresponsive, “cruel,” and imprecise. Players report sliding “like on ice,” getting stuck on geometry, and facing a level of difficulty derived not from clever design but from janky implementation. One player on RAWG succinctly noted it requires “almost pixel accuracy of the timing” but lacks the polished controls to make that fairness possible, leading to immense frustration.

The core gameplay loop—traverse a level, collect items, survive—is broken. This breakage appears to be both intentional and unintentional. Unintentional in the sense that it likely stems from a lack of playtesting and polish. Intentional in that this very brokenness becomes the point for a certain audience. The game transforms from a platformer into a rage simulator, a piece of so-called “so bad it’s good” software. The act of struggling against the game’s own inadequacies becomes the primary experience for many, a meta-commentary on bad game design itself.

The inclusion of 28 Steam Achievements provides a bizarre layer of progression. For the masochistic completist, these achievements offer a reason to endure the game’s 20 levels, but for most, they are an unattainable checklist highlighting the game’s abrasive nature.

World-Building, Art & Sound

An Aesthetic of Asset Flips and Memes
The world of Vapeland is a visual cacophony. The art direction is best described as rudimentary, utilizing simple, likely stock or self-made assets with little cohesive style. The juxtaposition of a cartoonish alien with pixel-art Cthulhu and photorealistic roosters creates a jarring, disjointed atmosphere that undermines any sense of immersion.

This is not the carefully crafted dissonance of a game like Hylics; it is the result of a constrained budget and a focus on referential content over aesthetic harmony. The world feels less like a place and more like a slideshow of images the developer found amusing.

The sound design, promised to be a “good relaxing soundtrack,” is mentioned sparingly in reviews, suggesting it is functional at best and forgettable at worst. It exists to fill the audio void but does little to define the game’s identity or alleviate the frustration of its gameplay. The overall presentation solidifies Adventures of Pipi‘s status as a digital curiosity rather than a crafted experience.

Reception & Legacy

Mostly Positive: A Statistical Mirage
Adventures of Pipi holds a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam based on 165 reviews. This statistic is profoundly misleading and is the key to understanding its legacy. Digging into the reviews reveals a stark divide.

A significant portion of positive reviews are ironic endorsements. They are jokes, part of the game’s own meme ecosystem. Reviews praise the game for its “amazing dynamism” offered by the spinners or call it the “perfect rage Simulator” to offer friends. These are not assessments of quality; they are performance art using the Steam review system as a canvas.

The negative reviews are brutally honest: “DO NOT TAKE THIS GAME, IT IS A TRAP.” They cite the terrible controls, the lack of quality, and the feeling of being cash-grabbed. One reviewer aptly described it as “squalor at the level of ‘free flash games, a sample of the end of 2003’.”

Its legacy is twofold. First, it serves as a prime example of a certain type of Steam-era game: the meme game. It directly inspired a sequel, Adventures of Pipi 2: Save Hype, and is part of a vast portfolio of similar micro-budget titles from Ghost_RUS Games. Second, it is a preserved moment in internet culture. It is a time capsule for the fidget spinner and vape memes of 2017, a game whose entire identity is tied to a fleeting online trend. Its influence on the industry is negligible in terms of design, but it is a noteworthy case study in marketing, curation, and the economics of the bottom tier of digital storefronts.

Conclusion

Verdict: A Historical Footnote, Not a Game
To review Adventures of Pipi as one would review Super Mario Bros. or Celeste is to miss the point entirely. It is not a game in the traditional sense of a polished, intentional experience designed to provide enjoyment through skillful play. It is a digital artifact, a piece of internet ephemera given interactive form.

As a game, it is a failure. Its mechanics are broken, its presentation is incoherent, and its design is frustrating to the point of being non-functional. As a cultural snapshot, however, it is a fascinating success. It perfectly encapsulates a moment in time, a specific brand of online humor, and the strange new realities of game development and distribution in the late 2010s.

Its place in video game history is not on the shelf alongside the greats but in the footnotes of analyses about Steam’s ecosystem, the meme game phenomenon, and the outer limits of what can be called a “game.” Adventures of Pipi is not good, but it is undoubtedly, unequivocally, a thing that exists—and for that alone, it deserves a historian’s glance before it fades back into the digital ether from whence it came.