External Links


lardo.z5
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

The Fat Lardo and the Rubber Ducky

by Anonymous

2003

(based on 17 ratings)
4 reviews

Game Details


Awards

29th Place - 9th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2003)

Editorial Reviews

Baf's Guide


The author uses his one-room game to scoff at a mentally handicapped person. While, from the technical point of view, he demonstrates quite remarkable writing and programming skills in doing so, the target choice for his jeer seems inappropriate, to put it mildly. Thus, if things like, say, kicking people who can't defend themselves in the teeth don't belong to your hobbies, avoid this game at any rate.

-- Valentine Kopteltsev

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

Call this game "Insultatron." Its purpose is to insult you in as many ways as possible, though not with a great deal of creativity. If that sounds like fun to you, than you'll probably love the game. If not, then you're like me.
See the full review

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

5 star:
(1)
4 star:
(0)
3 star:
(1)
2 star:
(7)
1 star:
(8)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 4
Write a review


Most Helpful Member Reviews


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
An obscene game that does nothing but insult you, April 17, 2016

In this game, you are the fat lardo. In one room, there is a duck.

Most standard verbs are implemented, and result in insulting you.

Why three stars? The game is polished. It is very descriptive in its insults. And it succeeds in producing an emotional reaction.

But the interactivity is bkring, and I would not play it again. I do not recommend this. Includes frequent strong profanity.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (1) - Add comment 

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
The game's title says it all, August 26, 2020
by AKheon (Finland)
Related reviews: parser-based, comedy, IF Comp 2003, Inform

The Fat Lardo and the Rubber Ducky is a very short, seemingly aimless parser-based game from 2003. Its flippant subject matter caught my attention, so I decided to give it a try.

You are apparently an obese, simple-minded man confined in a small room with a rubber duck. You are invited to pick up the duck and use various verbs on it to see what happens, but in the process the narrator will insult you.

I must admit that the extremely abusive, foul-mouthed narrator voice caught me off guard at first, making me laugh out loud. It's not very often you get a narrator like this in Interactive Fiction, so the game is pretty unique in this respect. I even thought whether (Spoiler - click to show)we could be dealing with a completely unreliable narrator here. He does seem to be quite petty and intent on disliking you, so he probably wouldn't be above embellishing some important details about how ugly, fat, clumsy, dumb and gassy your character actually is. But the truth of the matter is probably irrelevant, since almost nothing happens in this game. There are no big character moments, no grand revelation, no heartbreaks to mend (except maybe the player's own, if they listen to the insults for long enough).

The implementation is better than you'd expect, but still not very thorough. There are only two things to interact with: the player and the duck. Many standard verbs give generic messages. A lot of the verbs hinted by the prose do nothing. Especially by modern parser-based game standards, it comes across somewhat inconsistent and slight, and it doesn't help that the humor is pretty one-note as well.

This game might be fun for 10 - 15 minutes if you're someone with a dark sense of humor (like me) and also enough of a pedantic completionist that you'd try scrounging the limits of a joke game to find all the verbs that work (also like me). But for anyone else, might be the best to steer clear...

Oh, and I did find an ending (of sort) to the game: (Spoiler - click to show)by typing "xyzzy".

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Strangely Enjoyable, But Still Trash..., May 24, 2011
by Edward Kingfisher
Related reviews: swearing, funny, play, bad

Honestly, from the title, I had no idea what to expect. Possibly some stupid adventure, but no, what I found was a lot worse. I don't want to rush this game, or even deter you from playing it! I cannot deny that this game was quite funny, and even though isn't as good as some other titles, works well.

The 'story' involves you, who the game describes as "a fat lardo," finds a rubber ducky. THATS ABOUT IT. You can pick it up, squeeze it, drop it, nibble it, jump (a refreshing breath since I've been longing to get a response from that for years). You can't go anywhere, do anything "as far as I know" or really have any fun with this.

If you are in the mood for some language and lols,play it for a few minutes, but this game is no Emily Short.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (2) - Add comment 

See All 4 Member Reviews

The Fat Lardo and the Rubber Ducky on IFDB

Recommended Lists

The Fat Lardo and the Rubber Ducky appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Camp/"So Bad It's Good" by Ivanr
It might seem strange that a video game, which relies on consistent and effortful coding in order to deliver any kind of experience, could be "so bad it's good" in the way that an Ed Wood movie is. But it can happen, as this list...

Polls

The following polls include votes for The Fat Lardo and the Rubber Ducky:

Worst IF Titles by diddlescatter
(Sorry, Fredrik, but your poll was such a great idea that I couldn't resist!) So here's the question: Which titles out there do you absolutely hate? Remember, it doesn't have to be a game you've actually played. In fact, maybe it's a...

The worst IF ever? by theqbasicwizard
I'm wanting to do an episode for the podcast that deals with only the worst possible IF games ever programmed? You know the kind that if you would have played it for another minute longer, that you would have never played another IF ever...




This is version 4 of this page, edited by Paul O'Brian on 8 May 2022 at 10:36pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page