My Arms Are Longer Now is an inherently silly game. You play as a disembodied arm that can stretch out across great landscapes, which also has the singular goal of being a menace to society. Navigating an array of obstacles, you’ll use your wiggly fingers to pinch, poke and prod people, animals and objects alike – and steal everything in reach.
Per Matthew Jackson, Co-Founder, Design and Technical Lead at Melbourne-based developer Toot Games, it’s all in service of creating a gameplay experience that is creative, fun, funny and most importantly, very silly. That’s always been a goal that’s defined the studio and its approach to lighter-hearted games.
‘I always knew I wanted to make video games,’ Jackson says. ‘I started doing some game jams [with studio co-founder, art and narrative lead Millie Holten] … and it was really fun, and it felt like there was definitely a niche for making funny, silly games.’
My Arms Are Longer Now interview – quick links
Stretching out the idea for My Arms Are Longer Now
The idea for My Arms Are Longer Now was developed during a game jam around 2020, inspired by the thought of creating a small, fun game that made players laugh. When deciding what games to develop further in 2021, the original game jam project stood out for its humour and simple delivery.
‘We were looking for a game that would be easy to attract attention. That boils down to us wanting to have a game that you could tell what it is from a single still image, and it did a good job at that,’ Jackson says.
It also aligned with the studio’s goals to stay small and flexible, to be able to work on niche, silly projects without taking on any ‘risky or weird decisions’.
‘I like making games, rather than running a small business,’ Jackson says.
Treating My Arms Are Longer Now as a chance to surprise and delight casual gamers allowed for more time and energy to be put into wilder jokes, emphasising the strange nature of the game’s protagonist arm and its many shenanigans.
‘The actual vibe around the arm was “ha-ha, long arm” and it just being silly, and then in retrospect projecting a bunch of mythos onto the arm,’ Jackson says.
‘At one point there was a mechanic where if you got enough money, then you got more arm – but we ditched that pretty early on because it was just not fun. It felt like there’s been a few times where … there’s a pressure to make the video game more “video gamey” adding levels or points or skill trees. Every time, it’s always been, “Let’s just clear those away and try to put more jokes into it and make it more frictionless.”‘
That isn’t to say developing the game was frictionless, as Jackson described ‘going crazy’ trying to nail down the movement of the arm as it operates on a ‘very unconventional control scheme’ and with movement that’s ‘tricky’ to get.
Adapting the iconic art and humour of Millie Holten
Beyond the arm, one of the defining parts of My Arms Are Longer Now is the game’s exaggerated art style, which has been created by Mille Holten (Midnight Kiss, Long Head). Not only does it give the game a sense of being an explorable cartoon, it also provides much of the humour in its silly depictions of humans, their emotions, and the foibles of long, floppy flesh.
‘Millie’s art style came first, and we very much worked around it to try to make [the game],’ Jackson says.
There was a desire to replicate Holten’s style well, using 2D and 3D game elements to ensure My Arms Are Longer Now could be like a living artwork.
‘The game was 2D for a long time,’ Jackson says. ‘Then we ended up working to try to get the arm to go over and under, and to match what it looked look in the concept art, slowly turning it 3D.’
He says ‘a lot’ of technical work was required from the talented programmers working alongside Toot Games. Some concessions also needed to be made to ensure the art style remained dynamic in gameplay, but My Arms Are Longer Now eventually began shaping up to be an accurate and well-designed adaptation for those familiar with Holten’s style.
With this grounding and approach in development, the team then turned their focus to developing the humour, balancing the need to create a dynamic game with gameplay that lent itself to seriously funny moments.
As Jackson says, there were a handful of ‘comedic rules’ that defined this exploration, to ensure the right notes of humour were struck and that parts of the game’s horror, in the depiction of its fleshy hand, were couched in an abstraction that invited audiences in.
‘The arm should always be the weirdest thing in the scene,’ Jackson says. ‘The comedy should come from grounded human reactions to absurd scenarios created by the arm.’
These rules were developed through experience with comedy in performance and art, defining a minimalist approach that emphasises absurdity and silliness as players travel through the game.
The funniest moments are when the arm is spotted and the humans around it begin to react – all high screams and terror, to this abstract, horrifying presence in their midst. Characters have various voice lines to show their disgust and horror, based on proximity to the arm and what it does to them.
To create authentic, sharp reactions, voice actors were encouraged to improvise from their written scripts, and as Jackson says, that flexibility and freedom allowed for some ‘really fantastic, weird interactions’ in the game.
One of the screams heard in the early train sequence was performed by Holten herself. According to Jackson, there’s ‘a good 45 seconds of screaming’ as well as ‘three different variants of that scream’, allowing play and experimentation in the development process.
Developing cleverly-designed puzzles
Of course, My Arms Are Longer Now couldn’t only be about the humour. Without a grounding in clever, interesting gameplay, it wouldn’t be as moreish or compelling as it is.
Your task in the game is relatively loose, but there are some core goals to hit. As you direct the titular arm, you must steal an array of items, hit certain things and pinch certain things, all in service of solving clever puzzles.
‘It’s hard, because you want to have a puzzle that’s engaging and interesting enough to have the player stick around, so that they experience all the fun lines and the comedy and enjoy the environment – but also not so hard,’ Jackson says.
‘I actually was quite resistant to the game being too puzzle-y and too complex because it felt like … it didn’t necessarily make it more fun. Whilst you could have a lot of puzzles with the arm and keeping certain points of it in one place while you go and do something else, I think it actually betrayed the fun of getting to tangle up and wind around things and steal stuff and move through things.’
The game is largely defined by easier puzzles that ‘encourage exploration’ and ‘getting tangled up in the environments’, It’s in these lighter-hearted moments that it shines most, allowing its humour to speak for itself without being too bogged down by the complexities of gameplay.
What’s next for Toot Games
Through continued development and refinement, My Arms Are Longer Now is now taking shape in preparation for a 2027 launch.
At PAX Aus 2026, the Toot Games team will introduce players to its next demo, revealing more slapstick gameplay and the full breadth of the opening train level, which was previously available in truncated form online. Playtesting during this show will help to continue refinement, and give the Toot Games team the chance to see how players react.
‘I think it’s going to be fun to show off the game a little bit more finished, and closer to our release date,’ Jackson says.
Post-show, it will be time for Toot Games to get heads down on My Arms Are Longer Now and focus on meeting its key development targets.
‘I’m very proud of it,’ Jackson says. ‘It’s hard because you get so blind to it when you’re so close. But I’m really proud of the level of polish that we managed to get across – the animations, the sound and music.’
He adds, ‘In the coming months, we’re just working to polish up the games and make sure that when it releases, people find it funny … It’s so close, but it’s also the thing at the end of any project: somehow there’s just always more work, and you never really want to take your hands off it.’
