I've mentioned before that my father was a psychologist (now retired), and so I'm always amused by therapy humor. In fact, I think the first thing I ever had formally published was a cartoon in a local psychological review. I think I was 8 years old. How perverse is that.

So, I was thrilled to find The Asylum, Psychiatry for Mishandled Plush. It's a Life & Death-style psychiatric treatment game in which you, the psychiatrist, examine and recommend treatment for an assortment of seriously disturbed plush toys. Each one has a different condition, all of which make disturbing sense given their behavior. There's a neurotic crocodile with paranoid hallucinations, a traumatized sheep, and a compulsive hippo. It's a very effective game that abstracts some of the key treatments and conditions of head shrinking. I wonder if they game might be a bit hard for those without a background in psychology or psychiatry, but even as a parody directed at therapists, it's a tremendous effort.

But perhaps the best feature is that you can actually buy the plush toys you treat in the game. In a charming perversion of the Cabbage Patch Kids birth certificate, Paraplüsh come with a letter from the Asylum. Just imagine ordering a sheep for junior and then sitting down for some quality time doing virtual therapy on it.