Among the many strange things about the App Store is how many games we see released on a weekly basis that have a concept that’s so absurd it’s like something your super-baked friend mumbles with an aimless, glassy-eyed stare. In this particular instance, what was uttered would have been something along the lines of “What if we make a three lane runner but instead of playing as a humanoid character you play as a roll of tape and instead of running along platforms you’re taping up boxes." It’d likely be followed by someone else in a similar mental state saying, “Whoa, dude, and what if like, there were tons of different rolls of tape you can play as including a roll of bacon tape?"

Well, friends, this game exists. It’s called Tape It Up! (Free) and it’s so dumb I can’t stop playing it. You control your roll of tape by swiping between lanes of boxes coming down a conveyor belt, and you can tape faster by tapping- Although this almost always seems to lead to you uncontrollably boosting off the end of a box and missing the next box you’re supposed to hop to- Resulting in your untimely doom (unless of course you want to watch some video ads to continue).

Collecting the letters that spell “FEVER" kick the game into fever mode where you’re blasting ahead quickly taping boxes while you’re granted temporary invincibility. My favorite (and potentially silliest) feature of the whole thing is random power-up boxes that appear. They show up on the conveyor belt as open boxes you can jump in, which triggers a slot machine-like effect where you can be rewarded among other things, more coins, one of the fever letters, and my favorite… a video ad. I love the absurd “risk" of jumping in one, as you’re either going to get something good, or “penalized" with a 30 second video ad.

There’s loads of different rolls of tape to unlock, along with different themes, and the game is monetized through the ultra-standard Crossy Road (Free) method where you can either buy the cosmetic options or just slowly unlock them via collecting coins, watching ads, and daily gifts. At the end of the day, I just love how well the game executes the concept of being an … err, endless taper. It further escalates the arms race of ridiculous mobile game premises, and I’m excited to see where we go from here.