Short Game: Keep Your V.L.

Book of Mormon Toons’ (BoM Toons) game “Keep Your V.L” is a free, flash based online game in which a player takes control of a hovering aircraft with red, puckered lips attached to the front. (http://www.bomtoons.com/playgame.php?id=11) The ship encounters walls of green goo, cannons firing blue balls, and flocks of lips flying at it, trying to get a kiss out of the player’s craft. Ship-object contact of any kind is deadly, and the player has three crafts to expend before the game is lost, wherein the ship is shown in an animation to lose its lips, accompanied by text that says “You lost your V.L., and that’s something you can never get back… (unless you play again).” [sic]

V.L. likely refers to “Virgin Lips”, or lips that have not kissed another. It seems that the designers of this game have created an in-game world in which the user is their ship, and the ship’s lips are the user’s lips. The user thus has three chances to make it through the level without tainting their lips, keeping their lips “virginal.”



The out-game morality being pushed here is, in some ways though, less complicated. The final screen, “You lost your V.L., and that’s something you can never get back” is a somber note on which to leave a player, and carries with it an out-game guilt for those players who have ‘lost their V.L.’ The final addendum, “(Unless you play again),” lends a bit of levity of the prospect, but the addendum only applies to in-game experience – those who have lost their ‘V.L.’ in the out-game world are given little comfort by the prospect of playing again.

The game’s comments section has a few noticeable trends: some asking what V.L. means, and others answering. Some users seem to dismiss the game as Mormon propaganda or an idea that is not doctrinally necessary, as when user “ernst” says: “oh come on virgin lips????? jajajjajajaj look im a mormon but come on... virgin lips?????? jajajjajajaj thats so weird well if its a joke its cool cause i dont think ur saying this for real, do u?” Still others defend the 'Mormonism' of the game with comments like “You don't know much about Mormons if you think this isn't Mormon.” and “Only certain people will "understand" this game. You know who you are...” but by and large, the number one complaint concerning this game is that it is hard – and it is. Beating “Keep Your V.L” is incredibly difficult with cheat codes, and borderline impossible without. (http://www.bomtoons.com/viewgamecomments.php?id=11)



But what is this difficulty trying to say to potential users? Is it satirical, positing that it is imposs'ible for one to keep their V.L. in out-game life, as it is in-game? Are they trying to say that keeping one’s V.L. is incredibly hard, but worth working at? Are there really cheats and shields in out-game life? It is hard to say, and the game does not speak to its aim, but only to the failure of its users.