It's a whale of a game

If my mug shot looks more bleary eyed than usual this week, it's because I've been up half the night playing a smash hit new game. It's called My Beautiful Chippie, and is loosely based on that film about the homosexual chip shop owner and his love for a carpenter.

The shop owner is a bright lad called Intelligent Terence, or InTel to his friends. InTel is a bit of a loner, who has built up the most successful fast food business in town by continually inventing newer and better chips.

Every year they become twice as crispy and twice as nourishing, yet the price always stays the same. Tel has even invented low-fat versions for people who are always on the move, and cut-down alternatives for poor people.

Anyone would think Tel lived a charmed life, with his shop thronged from dawn to dusk and his tills always ringing. But although he has no direct competitors worthy of the name, he has a problem: the fishermen of the local port (called Softweir, after the unpredictable sand banks which protect it from the real world). No sooner has Tel invented a bigger and better chip, than the Softweir folk catch a more bloated fish which all but dwarfs it on the plate. So it's back to the drawing board for poor old Tel.

Understandably, Tel becomes a little paranoid and has delusions that he's always being watched (he calls this 'the war of the eyeballs'). To get a bit of privacy, he surrounds his shop with high billboards, all carrying his new advertising slogan, 'InTel's Inside'. He thinks he has stolen a march on the fisherfolk when he invents the Potatium, a monster chip capable of satisfying a whole family, or even a small business.

The fish have now grown so big that all the smaller trawlers have gone out of business, or else they have been bought up and lashed together to form one vast platform.

This is owned by fearless Bill the Harpooner, who braves mounting hostility from the creatures in the Sea of Usability and spears a 95-ton whale called Winifred, which he christens Win 95.

In desperation, Tel invents the Potatium II, an even more revolutionary design which stands on its edge, thereby leaving more room in the tray for the whale steak and mushy peas. But in his heart, he knows the ocean can't be beaten, and that Bill the Harpooner will soon be on his heels again.

My Beautiful Chippie looks fantastic, with little animations for players to click on - like the near riot when Tel launches a new chip just after everyone has bought their Christmas dinner.

There are also some fiendishly difficult riddles, like why we need bigger chips, when all we get to eat with them are bigger fish that taste just the same as the old ones, but take twice as long to eat.

There's only one problem. I can't tell you how the game ends, because it's so big that I'd need a Pentium III to finish it. I'm sure Tel will invent it one day soon.

Paul Bray is a freelance IT journalist.