Lab Rags
Lab Rags is a wacky physics-based puzzle game where failure is meaningful! Use your bodies from previous attempts as pieces of the puzzle as you help yourself reach greater heights and far-away platforms. Play as our beloved crash test dummy and pass through various levels to test the lab’s fantastic inventions! Turret in your way? Put a body in the trash compactor and now you have a shield! Can’t get to the platform above you? Jump on the trampoline bodies to reach new heights! A spike pit that’s too long and you’re lacking ammo? A sphere body is all you need to roll on the spikes with, without taking damage! Lose yourself in this 1920’s futuristic art deco world as you wonder how to get past all the shiny and cool obstacles in your way. Shimmering gold and silky-smooth marble pave the walls and floors of these expensive labs. Within, hear the roars of the turrets decimating everything in their path, the ‘whoosh’ of wrecking balls swinging by you as you try to avoid them, the ‘ztztzt’ of the electric flooring that vaporizes all material on it, and the signature sound of the Vacuum Gun, sucking up bodies and making new ones! “But why?” you ask. Why create this lab and these machines and these obstacles? Well, just like life, humans fail constantly. But we often forget to see the good in failing – it's meaningful. Lab Rags is built on this philosophy – that failure is good. Use your previous knowledge and past experiences to get over the next obstacle. Your past failed attempts literally help you in Lab Rags as your position, manipulate and shoot your bodies to cross, solve and advance! We at Salt Mine Studios wish you the best and welcome you to our lab. Have fun!
Reviews View More
There are four configurations: Body, which is a standard ragdoll used to push switches and create walkable paths over hazardous terrain; Cube, which folds the ragdoll into a stackable shape used to reach highter ground; Bounce, which is a trampoline and Ball, which rolls down slopes and can be used to ride over dangerous ground like a circus bear.
You can carry up to five dolls in your gun and switch between forms at will, as long as you've collected them, or replay the game in NG+ with everything unlocked. Checkpoint pods don't only respawn you when you die, they can also be used to replenish your doll supply by repeatedly pressing the suicide button while on the pod, which disconcertingly sends the screen shaking like crazy, so you might want to do that sparingly. Another way to recover dolls is by vacuuming up the ones you have already placed, or the ones that are left behind when you die.
It's all very bizarre and abstract, and definitely far too easy, since very little precaution seems to have been taken to prevent the player from just abusing bounce pads to bypass some of the nastiest obstacles. Dying doesn't reset your room progress, so going on a suicidal charge to press a button is a perfectly viable alternative to doing what the designer intended.
For instance in one room you have to traverse a narrow catwalk avoiding swinging pendulums, then turn around to discover the button you need to press was near the entrance you came in from. You are supposed to use a wall launcher to place bounce pads on a far away surface, then launch a ragdoll over there to press the button, but it's far easier to just hike back and stack cubes and bounce pads to get yourself over there, spam ragdolls at the button while in the air, die and then safely respawn at the checkpoint by the exit.
It's suffering from a lack of polish for sure but it's worth a playthrough and it's got a memorable musical tune on top of that.