There are games that make you feel like a highly skilled professional, games that turn you into a fearless warrior, and games that make you question whether you have any business being trusted with a pair of shoes. Safety First! firmly belongs in that third category. This wonderfully silly physics puzzler puts you in control of a rather unfortunate repairman whose job is to fix broken electrical wires using something called Magical Yellow Repair Liquid, or MYRL for short. It sounds simple enough until you discover that controlling this chap’s feet is about as straightforward as teaching a jellyfish to tap dance.
Developed by Jonas Tyroller, Safety First! takes the basic idea of reaching an electrical socket and turns it into a surprisingly demanding test of patience, precision and sheer determination. Your character’s legs are controlled independently using the two thumb sticks, so every step has to be carefully considered. There is no elegant platforming here, no graceful superhero movement, and certainly no guarantee that your next step will be in the direction you intended. Sometimes the funniest thing you can do is simply try to walk in a straight line.
Welcome To The World’s Least Reliable Electrician
The premise is gloriously uncomplicated. Broken electrical wires need repairing, and you are the unfortunate soul given the job. Rather than handing you a conventional toolkit, the game equips you with a supply of Magical Yellow Repair Liquid, which you must somehow deliver to the right places while you wobble around the environment, trying not to fall over.
The brilliance of Safety First! is that the controls turn this incredibly basic objective into a genuine challenge. You are not controlling the character in the traditional sense. You are effectively controlling his feet, with each thumbstick responsible for a leg, and learning how to make those legs cooperate becomes the first puzzle you need to solve. It takes a little while to stop fighting the controls and start understanding them, but when everything finally clicks, there is a wonderfully satisfying feeling to successfully shuffling your way across a dangerous platform.
Of course, that satisfaction is often followed by immediate disaster. One badly placed foot can send your repairman tumbling into an electrical wire, off a platform, or simply collapsing into a heap of limbs. The good news is that failure comes quickly, restarts are fast, and the game never makes you wait around for another attempt.
Ragdoll Precision
Calling the movement system unusual would be putting it mildly. The closest comparison is probably the deliberately awkward physics you might have encountered in games such as QWOP, where the challenge is convincing a body that appears to have forgotten how human movement works to cooperate with you.
At first, even crossing a small gap can feel like a major achievement. You press one stick, the corresponding leg moves, you try the other, and suddenly your character is leaning at an angle that would make an Olympic gymnast nervous. The temptation is to rush, particularly when you think you have finally worked out the correct sequence of movements, but Safety First! rewards patience far more than speed.
The physics are also responsible for much of the game’s comedy. There is something inherently funny about watching a supposedly qualified electrical repairman attempt to complete a simple task while his legs behave as though they have received completely different instructions. Every mistake becomes its own little slapstick routine, and because the game lets you retry so quickly, even repeated failure rarely feels like a punishment.
Don’t Touch That Wire
The environments gradually introduce more hazards, ensuring the basic movement challenge does not become stale. Rotating saw blades, moving platforms, dangerous electrical wires and fragile structures all have one thing in common: they really do not want you completing your shift.
This is where the physics and level design work particularly well together. You might know exactly where you need to go, but getting there safely is another matter entirely. A platform might move just as you are about to step onto it, while a swinging obstacle can turn a perfectly good attempt into another spectacular ragdoll collapse.
There is a lovely sense of escalation across the game’s 69 levels. New mechanics and environmental challenges gradually demand more precise movement, while hazards force you to think about timing rather than simply working out a route. The best levels are the ones where you look at the situation, think you have a perfect plan, and then discover that your character has other ideas.
Seventy Seconds Of Courage, Then Complete Disaster
Well, perhaps not seventy seconds, but the point remains. Safety First! understands that failure is part of the fun. There is very little frustration in having to restart when a failed attempt takes only moments to repeat, and that makes the game’s more difficult challenges considerably easier to stomach.
This also creates that dangerous “one more go” feeling. You fail a level and immediately know exactly what went wrong. You tell yourself you can correct that mistake next time, restart, and within seconds you are back at the same obstacle. Before you know it, you have spent far longer than expected trying to convince a pair of badly behaved legs to step onto a platform.
That accessibility is important because Safety First! can certainly be difficult. It is not difficult because enemies are throwing complicated attacks at you or because the levels are filled with obscure puzzles. It is difficult because the controls deliberately make something as basic as walking feel like an achievement.
Three Ways To Make Life Even Harder
If the standard experience somehow isn’t enough, Safety First! provides three modes, each with its own spin on the madness. NRML is the default experience and is where most players will want to begin, offering the intended mix of awkward movement, hazards and increasingly demanding challenges.
Then there is PEP, which takes everything and makes it faster. Flashing lights become more energetic, the music speeds up and the whole experience starts to feel like someone has poured an energy drink directly into the game’s electrical system. It is a wonderfully silly alternative for players who have already become comfortable with the standard pace.
Finally, there is DRNK, which does exactly what you might expect from the name. The world rocks from side to side, the music becomes much more rock-focused and the voice audio changes, making an already awkward control system even more ridiculous. It is less about serious challenge and more about asking how much nonsense you are willing to tolerate before falling over laughing.
Sound Is Half The Joke
The audio design deserves special mention for adding so much to the game’s personality. Safety First! is not trying to create a grand cinematic soundtrack or a dramatic story, and it does not need to. Instead, it fills the experience with exaggerated sound effects, ridiculous noises and suitably daft voice acting.
The soundtrack also reacts to what is happening, helping keep things lively even when you are repeatedly attempting the same section. Electrical zaps have the right amount of cartoonish impact, while the various physical sounds make every movement feel just a little more ridiculous.
There is a real understanding here that comedy is often about timing. A badly executed step followed by a perfectly timed sound effect can be funnier than an entire scripted joke, and Safety First! gets a surprising amount of mileage from these little moments.
Simple Looks, Big Personality
Visually, Safety First! keeps things deliberately straightforward. The clean 2D presentation has the unmistakable feel of classic Flash games, with simple environments and clear hazards that let you focus on the important things rather than getting lost in unnecessary visual clutter.
That simplicity works in the game’s favour. You can immediately see the electrical sockets, obstacles, platforms and hazards, while the repairman himself becomes the star of the show thanks to his wonderfully unpredictable physics. Watching him contort, stumble and collapse across each level is half the entertainment.
There is also something quite charming about how little the game needs to make you smile. It does not require photorealistic graphics or elaborate cinematic sequences. Give me a funny little character, some dangerous wires and a body that refuses to behave, and apparently I am entertained.
The Joy Of Getting It Right
Amid all the jokes, there is a surprisingly satisfying skill game beneath Safety First! Once you understand how the feet respond, you begin to develop your own techniques. You learn when to move slowly, when to commit to a jump, and when it is better to stop altogether rather than attempt that one extra step.
That progression is what keeps the game going. You are not necessarily becoming more powerful, because there is no traditional character progression to hide behind. Instead, you are becoming better at playing the game itself, learning its physics and developing a feel for the strange movement system.
And when you finally complete a level that has been giving you grief, it feels genuinely deserved. No great fanfare is required. Sometimes the greatest reward is simply looking at your screen and thinking, “I actually did it.”
Final Verdict
Safety First! is exactly the sort of wonderfully oddball indie game that reminds you why games do not always need complicated mechanics or enormous budgets to be entertaining. Its entire concept revolves around fixing electrical wires with Magical Yellow Repair Liquid, yet the deliberately awkward physics turn that simple task into a surprisingly deep test of coordination, patience and persistence. The fact that failure is frequently hilarious rather than irritating is perhaps its greatest achievement.
The controls will not be for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be moments when you stare at your character, wondering why his left leg has apparently decided to pursue an entirely different career. Yet that frustration is part of the charm. Once you stop expecting conventional platforming and start treating the movement as its own puzzle, the game becomes much more enjoyable.
With 69 levels, three entertaining modes, plenty of hazards, responsive sound design and that wonderfully silly personality running through everything, Safety First! delivers exactly what its name promises, in the least safe way imaginable. It is challenging without taking itself seriously, quick to restart and even quicker to make you laugh when everything goes horribly wrong.
Sometimes gaming is about saving the world. Sometimes it is about defeating an ancient evil. And sometimes, apparently, it is about watching a yellow-liquid-wielding electrician fall off a platform for the fifteenth time.
