The Divorce

The Divorce is a classic game of Pong, inspired by Rod Humble's The Marriage where the rules of the game were crafted to communicate how the developer felt about the concept of marriage. Petri Purho turns that idea around in this game, dealing with his parents' divorce.

The game is completely identical to the original Pong game, and therefore does not fit his series of monthly experimental games with innovative gameplay. Instead, it was later revealed it was just an April Fool's joke. The game mocks The Marriage where players where encouraged to find their own interpretation of the game's rules or meaning, while they are close to non-existent for this game.

This is what Petri Purho came up with himself: The bats are of course my parents. My parent are very long and thin, so this is represented by the shape of the boxes. The ball is an unwanted child of their marriage. I was quite young when my parent's divorced so, that is represented by the size of the ball. Goal of the game is to score 10 points in court to ensure that the child doesn't end up living with you.