The Amazing Shrinking Giraffe is a surreal
Tech-Demo Game developed by Paul Bird and released onto
Steam in 2020. You play as a
Funny Animal giraffe named Ginger given the ability to
shrink to insect size and grow to galactic size at will and tasked with saving the universe from
primordial serpents ranging from a universe-sized dragon to tiny worms.
This game contains examples of:
- The Ageless: The intro explains that the bigger you are, the slower your brain is and the faster you perceive things, so the apparent Faster-Than-Light Travel Ginger performs throughout the game actually takes trillions of years.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The serpents are treated this way.
- Baby Planet: Even when you're a reasonable size, planets are far smaller than they should be and you can circle them in not much time.
- Cosmic Entity: Ginger, the Intergalactic Serpent and the Space Dragons.
- Creation Myth: All atoms in the universe were created by the serpents' vibrations at the beginning of time.
- Dem Bones: Attacking a living creature other than a serpent will only evaporate all of its flesh and internal organs, leaving the skeleton still walking or flying around.
- Detect Evil: You have a compass that points you towards where serpents are, and any structure housing one will have a colorful aura around it.
- Draconic Abomination: The first serpent you kill, the Intergalactic Serpent, is the culmination of primordial snakes from before time or space existed merging into one supreme being by swallowing eachother, said being threatens the equilibrium of the universe by its sheer presence.
- Everything Breaks: You can destroy any structure up to a galaxy with a click of the mouse, so long as it doesn't house a serpent in which case it will be protected to prevent soft-locking. Most of the time.
- Excuse Plot: The game is a mostly incomplete prototype for experimenting with a mechanic, and the snakes are just there so there's at least something to do other than cruise around the universe.
- Fungus Humongous: Some planets have these in place of trees.
- Funny Animal: Ginger.
- Gotta Kill Them All: The goal of the game is to track down and kill every serpent in the universe.
- The Great Serpent: The very first serpent you're tasked with eliminating is roughly the size of the universe.
- Guilt-Free Extermination War: The goal is to commit genocide on a primordial species of snakes, but they're going to destroy the universe if you don't.
- Hammerspace: You can press F and G respectively to drive a rocket ship or car to make getting around easier, and you have an infinite "inventory" for spawning living things and random objects which is pretty much useless aside from screwing around.
- Hell Is That Noise: The serpents are a threat to your eardrums as much, if not more so than they are to the universe.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: If you get killed by a serpent, you get to see the entire universe destroyed, with every galaxy combusting one at a time.
- Life Drain: Killing and destroying things heals a portion of your health.
- Retro Rocket: You can pilot one of these with the F key.
- Sand Worm: The fourth serpent on the hierarchy, who crawl on the surface of planets but are still roughly the size of continents.
- Sizeshifter: The main mechanic of the game is the ability to grow to cosmic size and shrink to insect size at will. As an added bonus, the closer you are to the size of a serpent, the faster you kill it.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Every snake in the universe has banded together to destroy it.
- Stylistic Suck: This and other Paul Bird games with the awkward-looking Funny Animal models and scrappy overall quality and presentation.
- Sword Beam: Ginger's method of attack.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: One of the serpents may end up in a spot you're unable to reach or simply be invincible because of a Game-Breaking Bug.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can very well destroy the universe before the serpents do.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: You have the universe to yourself from the get-go and the only goal is killing the serpents, which you can do at your leisure.
