“Another TV is possible,” is one of many taglines for Blippo+, a channel surfing simulator available on the Playdate, Switch, and PC that’s packed with original programming from an alien planet called Blip.
The game hearkens back to a bygone era of broadcast television, a time before the streaming wars when you would have to flip through various channels to find something to watch, or tune in at just the right time to catch your favorite series.
Blippo+’s catalogue is filled with a variety of shows carrying the aesthetic characteristics of basic cable in the 1980s and ‘90s, all created by a wide array of artists across various mediums thanks to the combined efforts of YACHT, Telefantasy Studios, Dustin Mierau and Noble Robot. Whether you’re looking for educational content, news, Solid Gold-style dance routines, a talk show, a soap opera, or anything else really, Blippo+ has a show for you.
Its alien programming gives many of the popular streaming services of Earth a run for their money, and is a refreshing way to engage with art in the ways of the past for those of us who have grown into disillusioned luddites due to the state of the current media ecosystem.
While you can’t go wrong with any of the shows beaming in from the other side of The Bend, if you really want to understand what makes Blippo+ special, you should go straight to the cream of the crop of what all us lowly humans from Earth get to tune into.
Let’s start with Clone Trois. If you binge watched The Pitt earlier this year, and are now in need of more medical drama in your life, Clone Trois is the perfect medicine.
The hospital soap opera appears on channel 18 of Blippo+, and the entire cast of doctors and nurses working at the show’s Oblivion Memorial Hospital are clones of the same person, played solely by the fictional actor Seemie Simmons (Olive Kimoto). An added layer of philosophical intrigue…