Wire #SorryBro game will get you addicted and nerve-wrecked at the same time

Ok, the last time this happened was when the first versions of Angry Birds saw light, and millions of people saw nothing but their phone screens for years afterwards. Until enough pigs had been vanquished, you know.

I went to bed last night, intending to play myself to sleep with Ketchapp’s Wire #SorryBro game, at about 22:30h.

At 1:45 I was literally sweating, palms and everything, on the brink of insanity and sending my iPhone on a flight across the room.

“Just another endless-runner type of game”…

 Yeah, right… The game does appear to be nothing too exceptionally different from most endless-runner games, with controls similar to those in Flappy Bird and its “remakes”. There are hundreds of games of this type out there, but few of them have really deserved our attention, for most are too repetitive and similar in how they all feel.

Well, not Wire #SorryBro, ok?

The game is nothing special in terms of graphics or design. You basically have to navigate a “magical wire” to travel through series of challenges and obstacles, without bumping into “dark areas”, i.e. black objects.

That’s pretty much it…

…but it’s so darn addictive!

There are a few things that make this game incredibly addictive to your senses, whether you like it or not.

The game offers 19 unlockable skins, each of which features different music, colors and shapes. Also, the shapes in each skin will shift and change every time you “die” (hit dark objects), making it impossible to remember the track. The shifting background will keep your brain firing and trying to guess the next curve, even after many, many tries. While traveling through different environments, you can also collect diamonds to use for in-app purchases.

If you have the stupidity of leaving the sound on, like we did, you will be listening to tones and music that stimulate your engagement with the game, and get your brain hooked on sense drugs.

Also, every time you touch or swipe to navigate the wire, the line changes its course, making only curvy and soft shapes. Now, it’s a fairly common fact that humans prefer curvier lines to more rigid ones – yet another, trap for our senses that we can’t control.

And it’s awesome – your brain loves it, and you’ll love it, too.

#SorryBro

This is probably one of the most annoying, yet weirdly entertaining features about this game. Every time your wire hits a dark object, you will get a red screen with big #SORRYBRO – a line borrowed from YouTube prankster, Ben Philips. It’s ridiculous, we know, but every time the hashtag flashes, your nerves will twitch and you will feel compelled to just “answer back” – another sly brain-hack. At the end of your battery, you will be left angry at the cheeky sign and at yourself for making it flash so many times.

Ketchapp really knew what it was doing with the features in this app, hands down. If you still have doubts, let us tell you that the app climbed to the top of AppStore within days of its release at the end of March. It also enjoys a 4.7 rating on Google Play and is causing thumb pain at large.

So, yes, Wire #SorryBro, at first sights, seems like just another innocent and trivial game that tries to stretch the endless-runner model even further. Like the wing flaps weren’t enough. Nonetheless, the people behind the game have done well to cleverly put together seemingly simple features that effortlessly drain hours away from your life. Good job, Ben, good job, Ketchapp.