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Lab · Branded Interactive · Spec

Recess — Take A Recess

FormatBranded browser game
MechanicBreakout / Arkanoid · 8 powerups · multi-hit bricks
BrandRecess (takearecess.com)
StatusReal brand · Spec

Brand immersion as creative method. Recess — "we canned a feeling," sarcastic millennial commentary on modern stress — as the brief. The mechanic earns its keep: you're not smashing bricks, you're clearing the noise. Power-ups drop as illustrated falling objects from the product range: a can, a leaf, a cocktail glass, a lightning bolt. Catching ASHWAGANDHA. or CBD. splashes across the screen — normalising the vocabulary without explanation.

Opening boot sequence mirrors the VSEL piece in structure, opposite register. Together they're the argument.

The piece — fully playable
an antidote to modern times
Your inbox has 847 unread emails.
You have three meetings about the meeting.
Something called Sunday Scaries is apparently a thing now.

We made a game about this.
mouse or touch to move · click/tap to launch
space or tap when gun paddle active to shoot
recess
0
calm
1
wave
take a recess.
mouse / touch · space = shoot
What this demonstrates

Brand voice in a non-copy format. Every brick label, boot line, powerup splash, and message state is written in Recess's register — dry, specific, never earnest. The game performs the brand rather than describing it.

Ingredient normalisation through play. Catching ASHWAGANDHA. or L-THEANINE. as a full-screen moment teaches the vocabulary without a wellness lecture. You experience what adaptogens are supposed to do — multi-ball chaos for ginseng overload, slow drift for l-theanine, ghost-through for CBD — before you've read the label.

Register range. VSEL and Recess share the same opening-sequence structure. One is a Cold War military briefing. One is millennial burnout commentary. The distance between them is the point.

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