Video Game / Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator

Top hat and handlebar mustache... Must be a really gentlemanly game.

[Your mother] [can't exercise because of] [your hat] [and] [secretly adores] [your math teacher]!

Oh... Sir!! The Insult Simulator is a 2016 casual game produced by Polish development house Vile Monarch (headed by several ex-11 Bit Studios members who're best known for their work on This War of Mine) and published by Gambitious Digital Entertainment. The game was originally written in 42 hours as part of the AM JAM Game Jam event, but has since been polished up, refined and put up for sale on Steam (available for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux/Steam OS), Google Play Store, Apple iOS App Store, and PlayStation 4.

Though the visual presentation suggests a fighting game, with life bars at the top of the screen, its interaction revolves around words. Each player is given a bunch of phrase fragments — nouns and verbs primarily — and must string them together into a grammatically-correct insult. Both players draw from the same pool of phrases, forcing them to adapt on the go; each player also has a hand of two phrases which only they can use, which can be replenished once per turn by sipping tea. Once one has assembled one's insult, one commits, and the other player may take as many turns as desired to finish theirs; then both players let fly. Using the same noun phrase in multiple consecutive insults increases a combo meter and deals increasingly heavier damage; likewise, each character has a topic they're sensitive about which results in heavy damage when addressed. Both tactics can be combined, of course.

There is also a network play feature. The way it works is one player generates a one-time-use key and gives it to a friend, and the friend enters the key to connect to the player who generated the key. And yes, the network play is cross-platform, meaning you can insult an Android user from your iPhone. Aside from that, there is also same-room multiplayer in which two people take turns playing on the same device.

The game also contains countless Shout-Outs to Monty Python. Scenes referencing the troop's works are used as the excuse to start your argument. There's so much references to the troop's work that it might as well be an unofficial fangame. Aside from that the game also references then-recent recent pop-culture like Windows Vista, Star Wars and Overwatch.

The game costs around US$1.99. Android users can download the game here. Likewise, the iOS version can be downloaded here and the Steam version here. A movie-themed sequel, Oh... Sir! The Hollywood Roast was released on May 31st, 2017.

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These tropes are very naughty and had a steaming romp with your mother! Settle this!:

• Ad Hominem: The Game. But even then it manages to turn it up to eleven, as the characters will turn the Excuse Plot to mutual verbal abuse so rapidly that it qualifies as a Non Sequitur.
  I wish to complain about this parrot I purchased.
  The Norwegian Blue... What's wrong with it?
  It's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
  No no... he's resting.
  [Your sense of style] [belongs in one of those cages].
• The Ahnold: Groan the Destroyinator is an obvious parody of two of Arnold Schwarzenegger's biggest roles.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • Sir Knight's profile mentions video games and hipsters, along with William Shakespeare releasing a new book. There's also the fact that "never watched Star Wars" is an insult fragment.
  • There's also the fact that H. P. Lovecraft is alive and well (though it's implied he's not entirely human in this world) and potentially having arguments in a modern day E.R.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Whenever you find an opponent's weakness, the game will tell you exactly what said weakness is and when it was hit, so if you ended up making a ridiculously long insult, you don't have to guess which part of it triggered the weakness.
  • The Hollywood Roast adds several more of these:
    • You are shown what parts of the insults do which amount of damage, allowing you to understand how to harm your opponent's pride better.
    • The new Comeback mechanic, which beefs up the damage of your next insult depending on how many bars have been filled up by taking a verbal thrashing (up to three stages), which can help prevent a player from being stuck in an Unwinnable situation from falling too far behind.
    • When you've used up your current hand, you can automatically call in another if you haven't already.
    • The achievements no longer require getting sentence combinations, removing their Luck-Based Mission feel.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: You can potentially start your insult with "Your sister is old and will die soon" and end it with "Your math teacher never watched Star Wars".
• Asian Speekee Engrish: Chop Sue E. in The Hollywood Roast speaks with a very thick Japanese accent.
• Ass Shove: The Postal Dude's animation for a Rude insult has him pointing a large gun with the infamous Cat Silencer on it at his opponent.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Each character in both games has a weak point that, when attacked with the right insulting phrases, will deal much heavier damage than normal.
  • Sir Arthur Knight doesn't like it when you bring up modern technology and culture.
    [You] [don't own a color telly] [and] [never watched Star Wars]!
  • Mrs. Maggie is sensitive to the subject of death and old age.
    [Your mother] [is no more] [and] [your father] [will soon kick the bucket]!
  • Mr. J Shufflebottom doesn't like his taste in clothing being made fun of.
    [Your sense of style] [and] [your hat] [smell of] [a grunting sow]!
  • Nigel H. is sensitive about the topic of weight and appearance.
    [Your face] [is dull and ugly] [and] [your sister] [is getting fat]!
  • Grisha doesn't like his Russian origin (or lack thereof) being mocked.
    [Your country] [supports] [the communists] [and] [your mother] [was born in] [a cheese shop], [you commoner!]
  • Father is very sensitive about his family.
    [Your son] [died because of] [your sins] [and] [your father] [is not interesting]!
  • Serious Sam doesn't like it when you make fun of serious topics.
    [Your wife] [has bum cancer] [and] [your beloved auntie] [supports] [the Nazis]!
  • Lo Wang's weakness is weakness itself.
    [Your father] [is] [a hamster] [and] [was defeated by] [a frightened schoolboy]!
  • Albert doesn't like to talk about his money issues.
    [Your house] [admires pictures of] [a cheap suit] [and] [smells of] [homeless man's socks]!
  • H.P. Lovecraft's weaknesses are mundane, ordinary things... and being called racist.
    [Your mother] [looks like] [an ordinary pigsty] [and] [this conversation] [is not interesting] [,and that's racist!]
  • The Postal Dude seems to regret his sins more than you'd think.
    [Your wife] [died because of] [your sins] [and] [you] [support] [the Nazis]!
  • Dirty Potter's weakness is potshots at his masculinity.
    [Your father] [kinda resembles] [a damsel in distress] [and] [can't hold liquor]!
  • Marilyn Nomore's weakness is poking fun at her age and good looks.
    [Your favorite director] [just doesn't get] [your red carpet dress] [and] [was ruined by] [your last plastic surgery]!
  • The Greasy Wizard's weakness is pointing out his troubles with the law.
    [You] [snorted nose candy with] [a strict judge] [and] [got cancer after being exposed to] [the bad cop]!
  • Wisecrack is weak against insults pointing out his lack of originality.
    [Your last movie] [grossed less than Green Lantern] [and] [is a carbon copy of] [a three-headed dogs' droppings]!
  • Wisecrack's reskin, Jacksepticeye, retains this weakness, possibly due to the sheer overabundance of Let's Players on YouTube and/or as a bit of friendly ribbing to the series' primary let's player.
  • Chop Sue E. really doesn't like insinuating that she is too weak to do her stunts.
    [Your onscreen romance] [is a weaker version of] [Kevin Smith's enormous jorts] [and] [was all done in CGI]!
  • Nosferateen is offended when talking about emotions and relationships.
    [Your ex] [lost a wizard duel with] [your mother] [and] [devoted a journal entry to] [your father]!
  • Groan is vulnerable when his intellect is questioned.
    [Your mom] [got a terrible SAT score] [and] [never learned English grammar]!
  • Jane Blunt is vulnerable to insults about England and the royal family.
    [Your adopted kids] [blackmailed] [her majesty] [and] [should do a movie with] [a shorter version of Benedict Cumberbatch]!
  • F. Parker, CFO, has a weakness that many rich people have, their wallet.
    [Your therapist] [was funded by a Nigerian prince] [but] [shops the bargain bin]!
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: You can make up insults like these. They usually don't do much damage.
• Black Comedy: Expected given the Python references: from using a dead body to hold your tea to the classic dead parrot sketch.
• Black Comedy Rape: The insult "<x> had a steaming romp with <y>", where <x> is an adult human. You can take it further by choosing "a frightened schoolboy" for <y>, or by selecting <x> and <y> to be of the same gender.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: Occasionally, the voices will say this in place of actually saying what you picked, for some reason.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The inverse of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking is also possible- you can start with "Your father never watched Star Wars" and work your way up to "Your sister likes to flash in the park".
• Captain Obvious: It's possible to compose "insults" that just state an obvious fact.
  [The Nazis] [are racist] [and] [you] [were born in] [your country]!
• Combos: Using the same noun phrase over and over gives you a score bonus, which is tallied under your life bar.
• Composite Character: Many of the characters in the sequel are composite expies of different movie characters and actors:
  • Dirty Potter: Dirty Harry and Harry Potter.
  • The Greasy Wizard: Albus Dumbledore and Gandalf.
  • Wisecrack: Basically a mishmash of many of the characters from films based in Marvel Comics' films: He has Deadpool's face, Captain America's shield, Thor's hammer, Iron Man's armor and an arm and leg of Hulk's. This ends up being his weakness, too, as he seems all too aware that he's completely unoriginal.
  • Nosferateen: Count Orlok and an Emo Teen version of Edward Cullen.
  • Jane Blunt is a gender-flipped James Bond, mixed with a bit of Cate Archer from No One Lives Forever.
  • Groan is a combination of two of Arnold Schwarzenegger's most famous roles: Conan the Barbarian (1982) and The Terminator.
  • Marilyn Nomore, normally a Marilyn Monroe Expy, becomes this with Morpheus in the tutorial.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Father has 150% as much health during his boss battle, unlike virtually any other opponent. And you can't unlock him until you've beaten him twice... though playable Father has the same health bar.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: F. Parker, CFO, is not only a money grubbing, amoral bastard, but in his profile, he abused a loophole in the Geneva Conventions to force the developers to make a game in a cold, dark room.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Occasionally happens.
  '['Your beloved auntie] [died because of] [your mother] [and] [is stone dead]!''
• Dude, Not Funny!: An In-Universe reaction if Serious Sam hears an insult that makes light of serious topics. This means that he's particularly weak to these kinds of insults.
• Eldritch Abomination: H.P. Lovecraft himself is one in this game.
• Epic Fail: It doesn't matter if your insult makes perfect sense, but it must end at some point. If you end it incomplete, your character will trail off and the insult loses all meaning, causing 0 damage.
• Everyone Is Bi: The "your wife" and "your husband" fragments can be used on all characters, regardless of their gender.
• Everything Is Racist: Albert has prompts specific to him where he'll pull the race card.
  [Your wife] [is racist] [and] [has a steaming romp with] [your math teacher], [and that's racist!"]
• Expressive Shirt: Depending on whether he won the round or not, the bomb on Serious Sam's tank top turns either into a smiling or frowning face. The same happens with Postal Dude's smiley pin.
• Fake Russian: Grisha is one In-Universe. It's a touchy subject for him.
• Fan Disservice: Several cases in The Hollywood Roast.
  • The Greasy Wizard flashes himself (wearing a speedo) when he uses a huge insult.
  • Marylin Nomore bounces her old breasts and flaps her skirt up and down when she uses a huge insult.
  • F. Parker accidentally drops his pants when he's defeated, partially revealing a speedo.
• Flowery Insults: It's possible to do this. However, too flowery and you risk getting penalized.
• Formerly Fit: Nigel Hogg used to be a male model, until one summer, he couldn't say no to his beloved granny's cooking...
• God: The Final Boss of the Tournament, named "Father" in-game. He can be unlocked as a secret character. Apparently "burning in hell" actually just means being verbally roasted for all eternity.
• Guest Fighter: The playable characters include Lo Wang, Serious Sam and The Postal Dude.
• Guide Dang It!: Nosferateen from The Hollywood Roast, a character making fun of the horror genre, is rather infamous amongst the player base for being seemingly impossible to unlock; the only hint the developers have given is that he's unlocked by playing online multiplayer but even years after his release, nobody can seem figure out what his exact unlock conditions actually ARE and many have gotten him seemingly at random with some players going through hundreds of online matches without ever getting him while others only had to play a small handful before he became available.
• The Hero Dies: The final level in Tournament mode is The Afterlife, where you have an argument with Father.
• Hipster: What Sir Arthur Knight embraces when he noticed that people were jealous of his old fashioned behavior.
• Historical Domain Character: H. P. Lovecraft.
• Horrible Hollywood: The setting for The Hollywood Roast, naturally.
• Humanoid Abomination: H.P. Lovecraft features rather prominent tentacles in his animations and speaks with a faint otherworldy boom to his voice.
• Hypocritical Humor: Enforced. This is a highly recommended strategy, because if your opponent gets a hold of a phrase that hurts your character's pride, it will do a lot of damage.
• I'm a Humanitarian: One of the nouns that the Postal Dude can use is "kebab made of your mother".
• Insult Backfire: It's completely possible to create insults that don't even target the opponent or their family/possessions, or even create compliments. However, the worst that will happen is they won't do much damage.
  [The Nazis] [are rude] [and] [don't like] [the Queen]!
  [Your son] [secretly adores] [your sense of style] [and] [your house]!
• Irony: The Postal Dude's Catchphrase is "I Regret Nothing." His weakness is reminding him of his sins, showing that, no, he doesn't.
• Lame Comeback: It's not out of the question to respond to a lengthy and flowery insult with something rather benign in comparison. The AI has a tendency to do this.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: Every time the game progress from one soundtrack to another, you can clearly hear the music derail to a stop before the next track plays.
• Mad Libs Dialogue: The player must string together grammatically-correct insults. They don't need to be relevant to the opponent, or to make coherent sense. However, if you get too absurd, the game penalizes you.
  [Your hovercraft] [was] [a hamster] [and] [the meaning of life] [is] [you]!
  [A cheese shop] [was born in] [this conversation]!
• The Meaning of Life: In the final level of Tournament Mode, your character asks Father to tell them this. If they win, Father reveals it: Treat other people with kindness, love yourself, and never ever refreeze food that has been defrosted.
• Mirror Match:
  • If you play as Father in Tournament mode, this will be the final level.
  • The same goes for The Hollywood Roast should you pick F. Parker, CFO as your character for Career mode.
• Mr. Fanservice: Nigel Hog used to be a very strong example of this trope In-Universe, but then he tragically wasn't able to force himself to turn down the platefuls after platefuls of "goodies" his grandmother cooked for him one summer, turning him into a Fat Bastard.
• Multiple Life Bars: Father has an extra health bar on top of his regular one, but it's not terribly big (half again the normal 75 HP), so he only has slightly more health than the average character. Plus, his weakness is talking about family, a very common topic.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: You can accuse your opponent's hovercraft of this word for word if given the right phrase fragments. There's even an achievement for it.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Father is pretty obviously inspired by Morgan Freeman in both appearance and voice. However, they had to get an impersonator to voice him.
  • Chop Sue E. and Marilyn Nomore from The Hollywood Roast are based off Lucy Liu and Marilyn Monroe respectively.
  • Also from The Hollywood Roast, the Nintendo Switch-exclusive character "Bad Motherhugger" is the closest thing to an actual celebrity guest in the form of Samuel L. Jackson.
• Non Sequitur: You can perfectly well build a sentence that's so surreal it falls into this trope. One of the game's hints actually points out that an insult that is too absurd won't get many points. Unless it's against H.P. Lovecraft, whose weakness is surreal insults.
  This lake dances like Satan, and it is scientifically proven!
• Number of the Beast: There's an achievement for mentioning Satan 666 times over the course of your play time. This is no longer the case after an update, as you now only have to do it 66 times.
• One Name Only: Albert. Just Albert.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The game makes heavy uses of classical pieces, most notably Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5 in the Train scenario and Georg Friedrich Handel's Messiah during the Boss Battle with "Father". And the song used in the title screen is a piece from Zimmerman's Anchors Aweigh. ^note Probably chosen as it sounds absurdly similar to Sousa's Liberty Bell March which was the opening theme for Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• Real Men Eat Meat: Implied with Dirty Potter, who reacts negatively to vegan festivals.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: All the characters have a special animation that plays whenever they perform a Rude insult (15 points or more). Grisha's animation has him sport these alongside a Death Glare.
• Refuge in Audacity: Name one other game that lets you accuse someone of getting off to pictures of their cousin's car.
• Self-Deprecation: The achievement for playing more than 100 duels is "It Gets Boring After An Hour".
• Shout-Out: As emphasized, tons to Monty Python in particular, ranging from sketch scenarios being used as the basis of the argument to memetic phrases from the troops' work showing up in the word pool. Aside from that, you can end your insults with "can be found in Pokémon GO", "Still uses Windows Vista", "Sucks at Overwatch", "enjoyed Batman v. Superman" and "Never watched Star Wars", as well as compare someone to "Donald Trump's hair".
  • The decision to make Father a black guy who speaks with a calm and authoritative voice is a clear shoutout to Morgan Freeman, who played the role of God in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty (if that wasn't clear enough, they even gave the character similar facial hair).
  • The pet shop scenario is basically the one from the Monty Python dead parrot sketch.
  • It's possible to create the insult "Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries", almost word-for-word what the insulting Frenchman says to King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (he said "smelt of" rather than "smells of" in the movie). You even get an achievement for the "Your mother was a hamster" part.
  • Also from Monty Python (Flying Circus more specifically), it's possible to compose the phrase "Your hovercraft is full of eels". This also lands you an achievement.
  • The achievement for using the insult "You still use Windows Vista and never watched Star Wars" is "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?"
  • Sir Arthur Knight looks and sounds a good bit like Sean Connery.
  • In The Hollywood Roast, the background of "The Good, the Bad and Your Momma" features a wanted poster of Walter White.
• Sinister Scythe: The Postal Dude has one slung over his shoulder in his winning animation, straight out of his home game.
• Sssssnake Talk: H.P. Lovecraft drags out "s" in some words, like "Louisiana swamp-priests".
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: For some reason, the AI tends to invert the subject placements of its sentences; it will say "[A frightened schoolboy] [dances like] [your son]." more often than "[Your son] [dances like] [a frightened schoolboy]." for example.
• Take That!: Arthur Knight's weakness is "Modern Times". You can deal extra damage to him by mentioning:
  • That he "enjoyed Batman v. Superman.".
  • That he's "never watched Star Wars"
  • Donald Trump's hair.
  • That he "still uses Windows Vista".
  • That he "plays hidden object games".
  • That he "sucks at Overwatch"
  • On a similar note, Wisecrack in the sequel, whose weakness is being unoriginal. One of the phrases that trigger this is "grossed less than the Green Lantern."
• Tangled Family Tree: You can insinuate some truly Mind-Screwy remarks about your opponent's family if you try.
  [Your mother] [is] [your father] [and] [your sister] [and] [was] [your son] [and] [your beloved auntie] [, and it's scientifically proven!]
• This Is Reality: H. P. Lovecraft's weakness is to basically tell him mundane things and sap his sense of eldritch wonder... or to call him a racist.
• Token Minority: Albert, an African-Englishman who speaks with a Cockney accent, was added to the game on 16/1/17.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Your character of choice. You're playing a jerk, but because your opponents are also jerks, you can insult them to your heart's content in hilarious manners.
• Violation of Common Sense: In the game, using the same subject multiple insults in a row nets you a combo bonus. In real life, doing this is usually a sign of running out of ideas, and thus would be expected to be less effective.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: One of Serious Sam's closing insults is "Oh God, who writes this stuff!?"
• You Are Fat: One of the many kinds of insults you can generate. Nigel H. is particularly sensitive about this.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Mrs. Maggie is an elderly woman, and is sensitive to insults revolving around death.
• Your Mom: One of the many kinds of insults you can generate. You can also insult, among other things, your opponent's father, their husband/wife, their son, their sister, their beloved auntie, or their math teacher. Father is especially sensitive about insults to his family.

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OUCH!

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