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# Nope, No, No Thank You
- URL: https://aftermath.site/felt-that-boxing/
- Published: 2025-06-06T22:17:14.000Z
- Updated: 2025-10-27T17:06:02.000Z
- Author: Riley MacLeod
- Tags: Blog, Video Games, felt that: boxing, muppets, puppets, Summer Game Fest, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-10-27 13:00

Tonight's Summer Game Fest presentation included a trailer for a game called *Felt That: Boxing*, which [describes](https://store.steampowered.com/app/3763840/Felt%5FThat%5FBoxing/?ref=aftermath.site) itself as "a heartfelt and hilarious boxing game where the charm of handcrafted puppets meets the punch of arcade fighting." It's by a developer called Sans Strings Studio, who [say](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sans-strings-studio/?ref=aftermath.site) they do "digital puppeteering." All that is very cool, and is also literally my worst nightmare.

Here's an embarrassing confession-slash-[unpopular](https://aftermath.site/i-hate-double-jump/) [opinion](https://aftermath.site/parrying-bad/) in the grand Riley tradition: I fucking hate Muppets. I hate things that *look* like Muppets. As a kid, adults were always turning *Sesame Street* or *The Muppet Show* on in front of me, and I was consistently horrified, a reaction that was made even worse by the fact that everyone *else* loved them. Do any of you remember *The Muppet Show* version of "The Windmills Of Your Mind?" That shit gave me nightmares for *years*.

Muppets and Muppet-inspired puppets are often weird, unpredictable, and unhinged. That's where the humor is supposed to come from, I guess. But as a kid, I just found it hugely upsetting. There's no way to know what these things are and what they want from you. "Windmills Of Your Mind" captures that to the extreme: here is a *thing* that seems calm and normal on the outside, but on the inside is completely fucked up. When it inevitably cracks, it rushes at the camera--at *you*, the viewer; at *me*. What's it gonna do now? Probably hide under my childhood bed and scream out in the middle of the night and eat my face.

And now here's a game about puppets beating the shit out of you? A *series* of puppets beating the shit out of you? What the hell, man? Why would you do that to me?

The problem with this phobia is that I respect the art of puppetry a whole lot. I know a bunch of activist puppeteers and I think what they do is really cool. That clip of [the guy dragging a puppeteer across the floor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y1Y5Ps3H8w&ref=aftermath.site)? Rad. *Avenue Q*? I can sing the whole soundtrack. This Canadian [vampire marionette show](https://variety.com/2000/legit/reviews/street-of-blood-1117775528/?ref=aftermath.site) I saw in some tiny Off-Off-Broadway theatre in 2000? Amazing! I trembled my way through all of them. (And did, in a story too long to recount here, say as politely as I could manage to a puppeteer in *Avenue Q*, "Please get away from me right now.") I know that I am missing out on a wealth of cool shit because I just cannot deal with puppets without needing to make sure none are hiding under my chair.

No offense, Sans Strings: It's not your fault your interests lie in cursed facsimiles of living things that are an affront to god. I bet you're working really hard and doing something really cool, and I wish you all the luck in the world in a brightly-lit locked room someplace far away from me.