Collect Tiny Old Dudes In This Oddball Indie Game

Imagine, if you will, that every time one of your snacks went missing, every time something in your room was slightly askew from how you left it, every time anything in your home was slightly amiss, the culprit was a tiny, rotund old man. Or a tiny, rotund middle aged man. Or a tiny, rotund old man in a fun hat, or a business suit, or a little bear costume.

And what if you could collect these tiny, rotund old men, or befriend them by spraying them with some kind of mysterious perfume the tiny, rotund old man guardian gave you? What if you could keep one of these tiny, rotund old men in an immaculately decorated shoebox and feed him cupcakes and strips of medium-rare steak?

And what if you could do all this and more on your iOS or Android device for the low low cost of zero dollars? It's hard to believe, right?

… Like, for a variety of reasons.

The Ojipockle games are simultaneously inexplicable and completely straightforward. Not to mention absurd enough to be completely worth a download if only for curiosity's sake.

In Finding Ojipockle, players assume the role of a young woman named Sara who one day finds a tiny little old many fairy thing eating chips on her coffee table. Their guardian tasks her with finding all the other little old man fairy things. They appear here and there around the room, and gameplay centers on panning the camera around into every nook and cranny to seek them out and "collect" all the different varieties over time. You know, a bit like Neko Atsume but with very small, balding men who eat your curry leftovers without asking.

It's a fine time to be sure, but it doesn't give you much of a chance to bond with your favorite tiny old man. For that there's Raising Ojipockle, the "itty bitty man raising game." Sara returns, this time to take care of a little baby old man (look, I know) in a shoe box. He needs plenty of rest, plenty of food, and plenty of pats on the head to grow up into a big strong tiny old man, and the ability to buy decorations for the little shoebox makes for a pretty well-rounded virtual pet experience.

"A pretty well rounded virtual pet experience" is not something I ever expected to write about a tiny old man raising sim. Finding Ojipockle and Raising Ojipockle are both available on Google Play and the App Store.