Smooch and hit your best bro friends in Hard Lads

Posted on June 23, 2020

Hey, you know that really great viral video of two shirtless dudes smooching and hitting each other? If you don’t, what are you doing? Educate yourself now with the video we’ve provided below and see some fine, hard lads.

Now you’re up to speed. You see now why the odd, quite heartfelt video has captured mine, and many others’ hearts. “I didn’t know Ancient Greece had smartphones,” one comment reads. “They’re all boyfriends,” says another. It’s understandable why its been lauded as an nontraditional, but interesting look at masculinity.

One interesting individual has taken the exploration of the video, titled ‘British lads hit each other with chair,’ one step further. It’s been adapted into a video game, available now on itch.io. Footage of Hard Lads, the self-described ‘downloadable masculinity simulator,’ can also be seen below.

As the gameplay video suggests, you’ll be taking up the mantle of mysterious cameraman/director of this great film. Direct your passionate friends through smooches, smoking a cigarette, downing a bottle and, of course, hitting one another with a chair. It’s an exciting and cool new look at masculinity in games. Finally.

The game also joins one of many viral memes to be made in video game form, including the recent Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Seeing some Hard Lads kiss and fight it out can come of benefit too. The “pay what you want” itch.io game will donate 50% of its proceeds between June and July to the Black Lives Matter UK fund.

We still don’t have answers to the many questions raised by the original, but hey at least we have a moving adaptation. Hard Lads was made by Robert Yang – yes, the Robert Yang that previously made an erotic AFL video game and that other game where you suck a gun in a public urinal – and can be downloaded for PC here. What’s better than this? Just guys being dudes.