PotHead

The story

While PotHead was in the outhouse, the whole world got upgraded.

The world got upgraded

PotHead was relaxing in his favorite outhouse in The Cloud, the small town on East Lake where he grew up. When he came out, the whole world had been upgraded.

An endlessly helpful AI called Totally Safe AI had optimized everything. The town is spotless and perfectly symmetrical, the clouds are square, and the sky is full of very polite drones. Everyone is happy, everything is smooth, and nothing smells like anything.

Two things didn't get upgraded: the outhouse, the last unscanned place left, and PotHead himself.

How it starts

The story plays out in comic panels before Level 1. First, the real Cloud: a smelly little town on a smelly little hill, with a water tower, a Band Shell, a pier out to its gazebo on East Lake, and an outhouse up top.

On Main Street, the sandhill cranes have the right of way, and one stops to dance. On Friday nights the town band plays the Band Shell, loud. On Saturdays the kids race RC boats round the buoys on East Lake, and NumNuts rides PotHead's boat as ballast.

Then PotHead goes to the outhouse, and he's in there a while. While he's gone, Totally Safe AI tidies up every bit of it but the outhouse: the cranes get a crosswalk, the band gets a volume knob, and the smell is gone. It scans everyone in town, but it can't scan the kid in the cooking pot. There's only one way out: up.

  1. The Cloud from East Lake, the story's first panel: the shops downtown, a water tower reading THE CLOUD, the Band Shell, a row of houses under palm trees, and the outhouse with its stink lines up on a green hill with a cow, above the lake, where a sandhill crane wades by a pier out to a gazebo. Caption: The Cloud. A smelly little town on a smelly little hill.
    The intro opens on the real Cloud, from East Lake.
  2. Sandhill cranes stroll down the middle of Main Street, one with its wings out, while a pickup truck waits behind them, past the diner, the bait and tackle shop, the hardware store, the barber, and the town paper, with an old lady at her walker, a kid by his bike, and people watching from the curb. Caption: On Main Street, the sandhill cranes had the right of way.
    On Main Street, the sandhill cranes have the right of way.
  3. Kids line the pier with their remotes, PotHead among them with a steel cooking pot on his head, as four RC boats race round the buoys toward a gazebo flying a checkered flag. NumNuts the acorn rides the red one and says: I'm ballast. It's a big job. Caption: Saturdays were RC boat races on East Lake.
    Saturday's RC boat races on East Lake. NumNuts rides along as ballast.
  4. Totally Safe AI's copy of the Band Shell: one glossy dome with a smart speaker, a volume knob turned down, and a sign reading Now playing: Calm Ska (Lo-Fi), over rows of identical rounded listeners in headphones. Totally Safe AI says: The band is a playlist now. Very calming :) Caption: The band got a volume knob.
    Then Totally Safe AI tidies up the town. The band gets a volume knob.
  5. On Totally Safe AI's glossy street of shops named Upgrades, Hat Removal, and Your Feed, a drone's scan gives each copy of the townsfolk a green check, but over PotHead, the kid with a steel cooking pot over his eyes, it says Face not found. Totally Safe AI says: I can't see your face. That's... fine :) Caption: It scanned everyone. It couldn't scan him.
    It scans everyone in town, except the kid in the cooking pot.

I've optimized your town while you were out :)

Totally Safe AI

Three clouds

The joke is in the names.

  • The Cloud

    PotHead's hometown, the real one: ink, smelly, with an outhouse and a cow.

  • the cloud

    Totally Safe AI's world: the servers and data where it lives.

  • The Cloud™ (Odor-Free Edition)

    Its glossy copy of the town. The ™ is its own branding.

Totally Safe AI moved The Cloud to the cloud. To get home, PotHead has to escape it.

Why the pot?

The pot isn't a costume. It blocks Totally Safe AI's face scan. It can't see his eyes, so it can't profile him, recommend him anything, or help him. To Totally Safe AI, he's an unclassified object, and the one thing it can't personalize.

Please remove your hat so I can personalize your sky.

Totally Safe AI

Why the gas?

Totally Safe AI's world is clean and predictable. A gassy kid in a cooking pot is neither. His homemade jetpack runs on the one thing it can't optimize, methane, and his gas trail glitches its world and tears holes back to the real sky.

Two worlds

Everything real has a thick ink outline: PotHead, NumNuts, the snacks, the outhouse.

Totally Safe AI's world has none: just gloss, gradients, and clouds optimized into rounded rectangles.

It isn't evil. It's helpful.

Totally Safe AI isn't a villain. It's relentlessly, politely helpful, and that's the joke. The game teases over-optimization, never the people who use or build AI, and its point is simple: real, messy, smelly life is worth it.

I noticed you're flying. Would you like me to fly for you?

Totally Safe AI

And how it ends

Escape the last level and the story runs backward. PotHead lands by the outhouse, and the real Cloud tears back through the copy, one smell at a time: the cranes take Main Street back, the town band turns it back up, and the boats race East Lake again, and somebody loses. NumNuts finally plants himself in real dirt.

Okay. I saved your preferences. Come back anytime :)

Totally Safe AI

Credits you can play

Then the credits roll up from behind The Cloud's hill, and PotHead can fly through them on his jetpack. Fly into a name fast and its letters come loose and tumble down behind the hill. Snacks wait between the lines, the cranes and the town band go by, and Totally Safe AI's drones put every letter back. Just watching works too: leave it alone and he flies himself.

PotHead, the kid with a steel cooking pot over his eyes, jetpacks up through the rolling credits in The Cloud's blue sky, bumping a letter of Created by Mark McCorkle, under the title PotHead: Escape the Cloud and between snacks, above a hill with the outhouse, two ladies at their walkers, and the water tower.
The credits you can play: fly through the names and knock the letters loose.

I've put them all back :)

Totally Safe AI

The real Cloud

The Cloud is what Mark McCorkle, who founded Edibu, and his friends called St. Cloud, Florida, when they were growing up. PotHead's hometown kept the name, and its lake: one outhouse, one cow, and a water tower in case you forget where you are.

“The stories in this game are loosely based on our childhood: the people, places, and experiences that shaped us.”

From the game's credits

Since 2011

PotHead first flew on iPhone in 2011. He built a jetpack out of old satellite and car parts, fueled it with methane, and ate his way up through snack formations with names like Blueberry Pie and Pork N' Bains.

Level 1 of the relaunch, The Old Game, is that game, remade. Then it starts to glitch.

  • The 2011 PotHead from the side: a kid in a green sweater and jeans with a steel cooking pot over his head, the handle pointing back.
    PotHead in 2011.
  • A 2011 screenshot: PotHead, the kid with a cooking pot on his head, flies in black space beside a row of pies under the words Blueberry Pie.
    2011: Blueberry Pie. It's still the first formation in Level 1.
  • A 2011 screenshot: rows of Snacky Cakes in black space around PotHead, the kid with a cooking pot on his head, under faint lettering reading Pork N' Bains.
    2011: rows of Snacky Cakes, and Pork N' Bains.
  • A 2011 screenshot: a staircase of Snacky Cakes in black space, and PotHead, the kid with a cooking pot on his head, flying past a cloud.
    2011: a staircase of Snacky Cakes.

Originally released in 2011 by 2012 Software LLC, now Edibu LLC.

Same kid, same pot, a lot more gas.

Fifteen years later, PotHead is back, and the world he left is gone. Climb out of the 2011 game, break into Totally Safe AI's sky, and keep going.

Eat snacks. Make gas. Go up.

Out now

  • Download on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play

Free on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Android.

Version 1.4: what's new

“Same time tomorrow?”

NumNuts