A Firm Handshake is a free silly action video game wherein you have to shake hands with strangers. Developed by Torfi, this 3D indie game is a single-player low-poly physics game where the goal is simple and there’s no need to worry about the presence of a story.

Similar to Plug & Play and KIDS, A Firm Handshake features a strange and surreal world operating on weird unspoken rules. You have to follow these in order to progress and see the end of this hilarious journey. Surprisingly, there are emotions and moral lessons you can experience here.

Nice to meet you

A Firm Handshake immediately starts off without any instruction. Your character, donning a swanky business suit, faces a clone of himself and the bottom of the screen displays the directional arrow keys on your keyboard to indicate how you will move. Alternatively, you can use the WASD keys. When you get close to the other character, you will immediately lift a hand and you two will shake hands.

Afterward, your clone will start following you and the more you find other clones and shake hands with them, the longer your conga line will be. Eventually, you’re given a new challenge to tackle and the goal is still to shake someone’s hand. However, you’ll soon find out that this simple gesture won’t always work. The ending is what makes this short game impactful despite its easy gameplay.

In terms of controls, it’s only a bit tricky to make your character walk as he toddles slowly due to the physics of the game. The lack of clear instructions and goals isn’t frustrating here as the handshake is automatic and is what moves the silent story forward. The slight top-down view is interesting as you explore the infinite looping space—highlighting how surreal the situation is. 

It’s only polite

All in all, A Firm Handshake is an interesting little indie game that tells a short story without using text. It looks silly at first but the levels you have to go through can have different meanings for different people. While the controls can be annoying at times, the game isn’t too hard to complete. That being said, however, there’s hardly any replayability here.