Slime at the bottom of this rabbit hole

[tcreynolds]

I've been playing Candy Crush (yeah, yeah) and its evil spinoff, Soda Crush. My sister turned me on to it and I learned a few things. It's interesting to play a game that was allegedly designed by psychologists to be as addictive as possible. Shiny cute animations, shiny cute sound effects, bright colors, good music. I was especially impressed when, for the game's 10th anniversary, the studio hired a full orchestra to perform the game music. They've moved back to digital compositions since then, but that was wonderfully entertaining.

The object of the game is to pass puzzle levels. Some puzzles require you to create combos to break various types of square blocks. Some are made of "ice", and break with a pleasing crunch and crackle. Some are "liquorice" and snap with a rubber sound and action.
My favorites are the "honey" types, they look like a chunk of honeycomb. They take five hits to completely remove, and every hit has a pleasing "bloop" sound and a honey-filled squish action. A completely full honey cube will be amber, and each hit it becomes progressively more golden. As you weaken the honey cube, you can begin to see the silhouette of the bear trapped inside. The object of these "honey" levels is typically to free all the trapped bears.

It's been interesting to see the results of these game designers and psychologists, to create the most appealing (alright, I'll say addictive too) game possible. The importance of quality sounds, animation, and color design cannot be ignored or cheaped out on.

Because I enjoy "crushing" the honey cubes the most, I thought, surely there must be merch of this game out there, but there's surprisingly little. Redbubble junk, stickers, some cheaply made tees. I didn't know what I was looking for at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized; I want my own honey cube to squish and poke. I've seen some liquid filled keychains around, surely someone out there has made something that is like a fidget toy with a satisfying squish and jiggle.

Then Google served me this: "A clear slime base with squishy sponge "jelly cubes" to squish and pop" with a light honey scent.

https://peachybbies.com/en-ca/products/honeycube-squish-jelly-cube

Then I fell down the rabbit hole of looking up slime videos and makers. Of course I bought one! It wasn't quite what I was looking for but it hits a lot of the marks. Texture and ASMR, which is something I had heard a lot about, but didn't quite understand when I looked at videos of people whispering. I figured I wasn't wired that way, and that's okay. But it is pleasing to pull this slime out and play with it for awhile. It's cool and smells nice, and I can feel the different toy charms inside as I gently squish and fold it. Occasionally one of the charms will come to the surface and oh, here's the little bee, here's the bear, here's a piece of comb. Air bubbles can get inside and they pop and crackle. The only minor downside is I squished one of the jelly chunks and oops! I thought it was made of sponge and would bounce back, but nope, that one cube is shattered now.

It's great for mild! anxiety (don't expect slime to do much if you're in the middle of a panic attack) and giving me something that feels and smells nice under my hands. It helps give me something pleasant to focus on, and is a lot more gentle than the typical "stress ball" toys. Eventually I would like to try other textures of slime, like the clay, butter, and crunchy.

Comments

[frith]

Or you could take up pottery, ceramics, that white stuff that hardens (Plaster of Paris!), sand castles, mandalas, bread making, pastry decorating, earthworm farming... Goop does not feel nice in my hands, that must be why I do none of those things, or if I have to, I wear gloves. Dirt! Icky dirt! *shudder*

[okojosan]

That's really interesting! Did you play with Silly Putty as a kid? I always had some Silly Putty and it was fun to fold it and then pop the air bubbles inside. I'd also press it over the comics in the Sunday newspaper and it would pick up an impression of the comic ink. I hadn't thought about buying slime stuff, but I do have Fidget Cubes.