Effing Hail

Effing Hail is a 2009 action Flash game developed by Jacob Grahn and aeiowu.
It was the second in a series of collaborations where they originally planned to make one game a day for the month of January 2009."An Interview with Jiggmin". Casual Game Informer. April 15, 2009. They came up with the title first and, like the other games, aeiowu rented books from his local library to draw inspiration from, saying: 
"I wanted to capture the look and feel of playing with extreme weather patterns inside of an info-designed text book.""More from the collaboration front lines with Jiggmin/aeiowu". Intuition Games. January 8, 2009.
It was their only collaboration released on time since it received a sponsorship from Pogo, who partially chose the game for its humoristic appeal, saying: 
"We always want to offer players fun games with some humor, and we thought this game excelled at both"."BOGGLE-Mania, Maple Leafed Homepage, Effing Hail, Manly Editors and More!". Pogo. July 1, 2009.
The Great Red Herring Chase was published several months later without a sponsor, while their other games (Inkclipse/A Murder in Crowland) were never released.
Effing Hail went on to receive millions of plays and acclaim from critics."Calculating Play Counts". Jiggmin Wiki. July 10, 2020. The gameplay was praised for its simple, yet complex physics that allowed for strategy."Effing Hail Review". Jayisgames. April 9, 2009."Daemon's Take on Effing Hail". IGN. June 26, 2009."Browser Game Pick: Effing Hail (Jiggmin, Greg Wohlwend)". IndieGames.com. April 8, 2009."Effing Hail!". Atomic MPC. April 9, 2009."Free Bytes: Effing Hail". Green Pixels. May 6, 2009."Effing Hail". TIGSource. April 10, 2009."Effing Hail". freegamesnews.com. April 9, 2009."Play This: Effing Hail". Onelargeprawn. February 2, 2010."Takeaway Brain". Sudo Null IT News. July 7, 2009. Its infograph-styled visuals were also highlighted, with the two combined being seen as slightly educational."SLACKERJACK – Effing Hail". HecklerSpray. April 16, 2009."Effing Hail, The isometric infographic game!". Cool Infographics. May 5, 2009."The Curious Appeal of Effing Hail". 61 Frames Per Second. April 21, 2009."Effing Hail: Cool Isometric Infographics as a... Game". Information Aesthetics. April 29, 2009."Gimme Indie Game: the catastrophic infographics of Jiggmin/Aeiowu's Effing Hail". Offworld. April 22, 2009."Effing Hail Review". E4.com. May 5, 2009."Alt+Escape: Effing Hail". The Escapist. April 10, 2009."Effing Hail". Rock Paper Shotgun. April 9, 2009."Indie showcase: Effing Hail". NAG. September 21, 2012."Game van de week: Effing Hail". RTL Nieuws. May 2, 2009."Tea Time with Effing Hail". AristoGamer. April 19, 2013. Readers of Jayisgames voted Effing Hail the 3rd best physics game of 2009."Best of Casual Gameplay 2009 - Physics Results". Jayisgames. The site later featured it in their "The Vault" series, which highlights the best games they've ever reviewed."The Vault №139". Jayisgames. June 4, 2013. IndieGames named it their 10th best browser arcade game of the year."Feature: Top Browser Arcade Games 2009". IndieGames.com. January 14, 2010. Critical Distance also included it on its "99 Best Free Games of 2009" list, while PC Gamer magazine named it among their "50 Games to Play at Work" in their May 2010 issue."Opinion: The 99 Best Free Games Of 2009". Critical Distance. December 31, 2009."50 games to play at work". PC Gamer. May 2010. It was featured in The Austin Chronicle and the French newspaper Libération, as well as one of Adobe's blogs."This Week's Waste of Time: One man, many free online games to play". The Austin Chronicle. September 9, 2010."Seen on the www: A game of destruction, an animated haiku, etc.". Libération. April 10, 2009."Thursday Infographics: From Rambo to D&D". Adobe. June 18, 2009. Members of Newgrounds voted it the 2nd best submission of the day and among the top 20 games of the month."Top entries from 04/07/2009!" - Newgrounds."Best of April 2009" - Newgrounds Its perceived educational value has even caused it to be referenced in books."Newsgames: Journalism at Play". The MIT Press. October 1, 2010."Games, Entertainment, Education: Issues 46-49". P. 16. 2009.
A sequel was released a year later as a result of the game's success.
==Gameplay==
Effing Hail takes place during a hailstorm where players control the updraft with their mouse. The main goal is to destroy buildings, airplanes and other objects with the falling hail.
The game includes a time limit that starts at 2 minutes and replenishes as players complete lessons. If they don't finish in time, they can restart at the same point at the cost of losing all their "Effing $$".
==Music==
Main article: Songs
Audio	Song 	Length
 	We are Loud – Dynamedion	2:02
==Trivia==
*The cut text on the result/title screens can be seen by playing the Armor Games version in full screen.
*An early screenshot of lesson one shows several differences from the final game:
**Instructions were originally on a large sticky note (which is actually still in the game, but unused).
**"Effing $$" was spelled out as "Effing Dollars".
**The sound icon was white and placed on the right side of the screen.
*The full sound for happy blocks in the Platform Racing series plays when you complete a lesson, similarly to its use in Rolley-Ball.
*As pogo.com initially only paid half the money they agreed in exchange for sponsorship, Jiggmin announced in July that he and aeiowu were considering taking legal action."Pogo.com - they are punks". Jiggmin. July 5, 2009. Pogo paid the remaining amount a few days later however."Pogo.com". Jiggmin. July 8, 2009.
==Gallery==
Effing Hail - Newsgames.png|Effing Hail's paragraph in Newsgames: Journalism at Play.
Effing Hail - PCGamer.png|The game featured in PC Gamer magazine's May 2010 issue.
Effing Hail Research.jpg|Books aeiowu drew inspiration from.
Carbon_cycle-cute_diagram.jpeg|Pic he also used for inspiration.aeiowu on Twitter: "researching carbon for a collab game w/ @weasello I stumbled on an info graphic i used for ref. on effing hail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_cycle-cute_diagram.jpeg =D". May 15, 2009.
Effing Hail (beta comp).png|Another early screenshot.
Effing Hail (AG).png|Armor Games' unique title screen showing the uncut text.
==Links==
*Play Effing Hail
*Full Screen Link
==References==
Category:Games
Category:Collaborations
Category:Single-Player Games
Category:2009 Games