Now, this is a strange one. Our story begins with a middle-aged Australian woman describing to a detective how her briefcase has been stolen. So far, so normal. What’s a little less normal is that the perpetrator is an arm. No head. No body. No mouth (thank God). An arm with a seemingly endless length of boneless, snake-like appendage that’s able to wrap and curl around the environment, slapping, pushing and grabbing at the world to achieve its underhand goal. And that’s you.
Told in retrospect, this brief, single-level demo has you on a train moving from carriage to carriage in an effort to relieve our narrator of her briefcase. Movement feels imprecise and whilst not QWOP level of frustrating, has a slightly nauseating fluidity that takes some getting used to.
With minimal guidance from in-game tutorials, your arm must find a way to re-enact the dastardly deed, via pickpocketing, assault and distraction. It’s fun to navigate around the environment, weaving your way through carriages or exploring out of windows, trying not to tie yourself in knots.
Comedy is a huge feature of My arms are longer now, the game’s title screen being a crying detective asking “why me?”, the art style a little like Jay Howell’s work on Bob’s Burgers. It’ll either land with you or it won’t. It reminds me of Aunty Donna’s work so, for me, it’s a hit but I can see where all you Marmite (or Vegemite in this case) haters might find a hurdle. The humour even extends to fourth-wall-breaking, directly addressing the player should they sit idle for too long. It’s simple yet effective.
Moment-to-moment gameplay reminds me of old LucasArts games, relying on the player to interact with the world, learning through trial and error from poking around, rather than relying on signposting in the environment to gently lead you by the hand. It’s in this exploration that you’ll have small yet memorable interactions that really flesh out what would otherwise have the potential to become a frustrating experience.
There are some minor issues, with your snake-like arm getting stuck on the environment or clipping through walls but luckily the developers, Toot Games, have already thought of this with a handy (ha-ha) reset button in the menu to get you out of any such sticky situation.
Short but sweet, the demo ends with a news report showing the value of goods stolen and a tally of your anti-social activity. Beyond the initial untangling of how to achieve your villainous act, I can see it would be simple to go for the any% speed run in this demo, so I’m curious to see the level of complexity in the full game’s release, as more complex puzzles will almost certainly be required to keep your interest piqued in the final product.
My Arms Are Longer Now is an interesting oddity. A bloody weird premise that leans heavily into sometimes surreal Australian comedy, it’s a unique take on the point and click genre that deserves to be kept an eye on, not one to keep at arms length.
My Arms Are Longer Now is coming to PC via Steam in 2027.
