The Christmas lights flicker. Not in a cozy way, more like the wiring in this apartment has given up on the holiday spirit. I'm playing this thing called SwipeBall 21, which claims to be a mix of some ball pushing arcade game and blackjack. The model on screen, a real skinny thing in red lingerie that's supposed to be festive, stares at me with that dead eyed look all these games have. She's got a Santa hat pinned to her hair at an angle that defies physics. I'm not here for the decorations.

The mechanic is this: you swipe a ball, it hits another ball, and the numbers on the balls you knock out need to add up to 21. Blackjack. Simple. My first few swipes are pathetic, like a cat batting at a string. The balls scatter with all the grace of a dropped bag of marbles. I get a 14, then a bust at 23. The girl doesn't move. Her expression is the same whether I'm winning or losing, which is somehow more insulting than if she laughed at me. I remember this one time I tried to fix the toaster by hitting it, and honestly, that same energy applies here. The swipe physics feel like they were calibrated on a phone from 2012, the kind where you had to press really hard on the corner of the screen to get the keyboard to register. You know the one. My thumb is actually sore.

Then, a breakthrough. A clean 21. The numbers flash, a little chime plays that sounds suspiciously like the notification sound from an old Samsung phone, and a piece of her outfit vanishes. The bra goes first, which is the least creative choice possible. The striptease is the entire reward loop, and it's as bare bones as the girl gets. No animation between states, just a sudden pop from clothed to slightly less clothed. It's jarring, like a jump cut in a bad horror movie. I hit another 21 and the panties disappear, replaced by a pixelated blur that reminds me of scrambled cable channels from the 90s. I wonder if the developers ever saw actual snow, or just the static on channel 3. The whole thing feels like a stocking stuffer you'd throw away by New Year's, but here I am, swiping again. The numbers on the balls are hard to read against the icy blue background. I wish they'd used a different font, something with more weight. But they won't change it. These games never do. The model's vacant smile is the last thing I see before I close the tab, a silent, frozen witness to my complete waste of a December evening.