In the world of NNB, the overreaching goal is to grow ‘Girl’ by stretching out ‘Boy.’ During play, NNB keeps track of how long Boy has gotten. Players can upload those results, which are added to Girl’s aggregate length as she travels through space, from planet to planet. Five days after the game’s release, enough players added enough length to Girl for her to reach the moon and she’s on her way to Mars and beyond, according to the game. Reaching new planets makes them playable game spaces with new objects and physics on each of the maps. The moon, for example, has lighter gravity, more mechanical and space-themed objects to mess with, and characters skinned in space suits and helmets. Players can keep track of who’s contributed the most length to Girl and how much they’ve personally provided, as well as their location in relation to all of the other players. Part of the fun will be seeing how much closer to the next planet Girl has gotten while you were away from the game and what will happen once the edge of the solar system is reached, assuming that enough players maintain their interest for that long.

NNB also takes advantage of the PS3’s hardware and networking capabilities. In-game messaging, screen shots, and the ability to record movies and save them or upload them to a YouTube account are all available. You can also create a 32-character message that will be displayed along the body of your Boy. There is also trophy support and all but one of the trophies are secret, unlocking only after you’ve unknowingly completed the required task. (For those who have to know, there are websites that provide complete lists of PS3 trophies.) The trophy support actually caused a bit of anxiety on my end, because I figured if there were rewards for doing things, then there must be specific things to do and started trying to play it like a game again instead of the interactive toy that it is.

It’s a toy that does have its complications, however. Despite the tutorial that runs automatically when you boot the game up, none of  the controls beyond the motions of Boy seem to come very naturally. The camera is especially cumbersome and I kept finding myself losing track of one end of Boy or the other and having a difficult time refocusing. The camera does give you a great deal of control, allowing you to zoom, track, and rotate it along the plane of the map, but the controls for it are so counterintuitive that I had to keep going back and consulting the in-game manual. Same goes for the menu and stats controls. Moving the left stick in a particular direction and pressing the ‘start’ button accesses different functions, which seems much more cumbersome than mapping all of the functions to either the ‘start’ or ‘select’ buttons and being able to select the desired sub-menu or function. Some of the controls can seem a bit wonky as well. Jumping can sometimes be a hit-or-miss proposition and, according to the manual, you can grab and pick objects up, but I’ve had no particular luck in doing so.

The graphics are simple and charming, with shades of the classic Gumby shorts or Pee-Wee’s Playhouse with a coat of electric watercolors thrown on. Occasionally, the base of the map glitches out, revealing the grid beneath. It’s annoying, but minor.

Taking NNB for what it is at its heart -- a multiplayer, desktop toy/virtual playground -- it’s an enjoyable, surreal way to spend 20 or 30 minutes playing around and trying to do the next weird thing. Add to that the fact that continued support from the community will provide more new environments and the impulse to check in daily and see how far along Girl is to unlocking the next planet and you’ve got a great deal, considering the $4.99 price point. Just keep telling yourself, "It’s not a game."