Former RPS sealife correspondent Nate once described the game Maneater as “an ecstatically violent simulation of being a fool’s idea of a shark”, which stuck with me. The Jaws Effect is a reasonably well known phenomenon coined in a paper that explores the impact the 1975 film had on Australian policy response to shark bites, although the term is now used a bit more broadly to refer to how sharks are villainised in pop culture – villainisation obviously being an absurdly human and dramatic concept to apply to a hungry or scared fish.
Jaws did actually result in an increase in shark culls, but its lasting legacy has also been argued to be more insididous. Depending on whether you’re looking at stats from the UN or from conservation charities, the number of sharks killed or mutilated and harvested each year for fins and other parts ranges between about 10 and 100 million, and it’s been argued this continues with relatively little pushback as compared to similar wildlife atrocities due to wide-reaching perception that ranges from apathy to vilification. A sharknado of lies, if you will.
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It’s a sort of reverse Finding Nemo effect – not the discredited idea that everyone rushed out and bought clownfish after seeing it, but the one that worker Sarah Wynn Williams writes about in her book on Meta, where a UN colleague in conversation tells her the Pixar films were the “single most impactful thing to actually protect the oceans over the last decade”. This is obviously a bit proverbial but the basic point that fictional media does stuff wot is also sometimes real should pretty much be a given by this point anyway.
All of which is the sort of shit that goes rushing through my head before I can get around to writing “lol look at the funny shark game”. Even though, sure, the shark game does look funny. Shark Dentist is basically Crocodile Dentist but with ray tracing and convincingly grimy teeth barnacles, set in an office that looks like the room from the first Saw film. The idea is you go poking around in a sedated shark’s gumline and then act all shocked when it chomps your ears off.
Shark, quite famously, do not need the dentist because they’re diligent flossers, and also because they replace their teeth frequently. This is fine. If this shark dentist was real they would be too stupid to live anyway, because they don’t seem to have considered it might be prudent to bind the shark’s jaws before getting in there with a buzzsaw. Here are some Steam features:
Intense Gameplay: Treat a shark’s teeth without waking it. Every mistake can lead to deadly consequences.
Roguelike Mechanics: Randomly generated dental issues, tools, and debuffs make each attempt unique.
Multitasking: Monitor the shark’s pulse, maintain oxygen supply, manage anesthesia, and choose the right tools.
Realistic Tool Interaction: Use syringes, drills, mirrors, and even a circular saw to tackle various tasks.
Organic Balance: Manage the shark’s stress level by finding a balance between the pain of treatment and limited resources.
It’s for “lovers of films like Jaws, The Meg, and Saw”, which reminds me I never asked Nate about his feelings on The Meg combining two of his great loves – sealife and Jason Statham. I’ll report back. Shark Dentist’s release is TBC.
