Team Coco members who miss Conan now have the option to create new episodes for themselves—sort of.
Another night… the pounding drums… the limb-shattering entrance dance moves. Still: He persists.
That’s how the experience of putting on a talk show is described in Conan Throwbrien, a new lo-fi web game that was clearly more than a little inspired by Conan O’Brien’s late-night career.
“You are Conan Throwbrien,” a trailer for the game explains. “Objective: Deliver the finest in comedy entertainment.”
In the virtual card and dice game, set against a rendering of O’Brien’s early set on TBS’ Conan, the player is tasked with delivering a monologue that amuses the crowd enough to generate a good Nielsen rating. That includes selecting a joke topic to riff on, then choosing which direction its punchline will go in based on some trademark Conan styles like self-deprecate, absurd, reference, wordplay, dark, and banter.
“Have you heard? GPS systems are now featuring celebrity voices,” the pixelated O’Brien says after the “Beepers for Babies” joke topic card is selected.
When instructed to “self-deprecate,” the host continues with the punchline. “I tried to get my own voice on a GPS system, but users complained my voice was, quote, ‘worse than being lost.’”
The effectiveness of Conan’s “delivery” of the joke is left up to a dice roll, injecting some uncontrollable luck into the process of delivering a good monologue.
The player’s final Nielsen rating at the end of the game determines which guest Conan has booked for that night. A particularly low score, for example, might net you an active volcano or Sir Isaac Newton.
The booking for a spectacular Nielsen score? Jesus Christ himself.
The “blackjack-like” turn-based dicethrower was created by game developer Steven Sych, aka spelafort. It can be played for free on itch.io. Perhaps it warrants a new edition of Clueless Gamer?
