One Chance

[davidn]

tamakun linked to a game this morning that needs some more attention. It's a very short Flash adventure/"art" thing (as much as that second definition seems to be used as a licence for "absurdly pretentious") called One Chance, and it's done in that blocky Atari style that seems to have been making a resurgence recently because of it increasing the discomfort factor and making things so much easier to draw in a coherent style. Except this time, with a cloth effect over it.



It's difficult to say anything about the storyline that isn't better found out just by playing it, but it only takes about ten minutes from start to finish. It's set over six days in a very small game world - it isn't exactly a horror game, but it shares the same feeling of decay as you explore the locations that you've seen before and find out how they've changed on each new day, especially towards the end of the story. The pace of the game is very slightly slower than I would have liked to facilitate the exploration of it at every turn, but as it's so short, it doesn't really matter too much in the end.

Though the graphics are very simple, they sometimes convey a surprising amount of feeling - and part of what makes the game interesting is the way that it drums into your head that you have a chance to do something, without knowing what that is, and that every decision you make is important. Indeed, once you have completed the game once, refreshing the page will only take you back to a view of the world as you left it - if you want to play it again, then you have to delete your cookies or use private browsing to ignore them (if you're using Chrome, then it's Ctrl+Shift+N; if you're on Firefox it's Ctrl+Shift+P; if you're using IE, then don't.)

One Chance

Comments

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Did I. . .win? I think I made a cure. Did everyone else die?

[davidn]

I was unsure about that as well - I think that I got the best ending, but that's not really saying much.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

I actually found this a couple of nights ago; I managed to [MAKE A CURE TOO]. Still, it seems like both Crassadon and I went the 'hero' route. Thanks for the reveal of how to replay it; it'll be interesting to see what happens if you try other things, like keeping your finger in the last paragraph of those choose-your-own-adventure books.

(edit: in related news, it appears I can't make the invisible text tags work in comments anymore, hence the rather stilted edit for spoilers. Apologies.)

D.F.

[davidn]

I saw the spoiler tags appearing all right in the email of your original post... but still. I think everyone's instinct, like my own, was to keep working at every opportunity, and that that's how you get the best ending (of a bad bunch - it's surely one of the bleakest games I've seen in a long time). If you miss it even once, then when you try the last time at the end you'll just die after another failure.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I think I got the same result as crassadon and lupineangel, but yeah, I haven't played it more than once (since I didn't know the trick to replaying, smart move on the creator's part) but I can't imagine there's a "perfect" ending.

[davidn]

The idea of only being able to play once (understanding of how the save system works notwithstanding) was a really interesting one, especially being able to go back in and see the result, being unable to do anything again. I noticed that uniquely, in the "good" (and I use this in the loosest sense possible) ending, when you go back in the characters have disappeared and the world seems to be coming to life again...

[kjorteo]

I think all of davidn's friends must be subconsciously wired to have similar decision-making processes or something, since I got that ending too!

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I didn't get it until my second try, although the thought process was there... I just did one thing that I shouldn't have.

[davidn]

It hadn't occurred to me until you said it, but I suppose it's not entirely unreasonable that people who know each other and have similar interests and ways of thinking (and, in some cases, have similar levels of empathy) might make similar decisions when faced with choices in the form of a game. From the start, I made the decision to "go to work" each time because it had been said to me at the beginning, and was hinted as the 'right' choice (in that you were given the opportunity) throughout, even surrounded by the hopelessness of the rest of the game world.

[kjorteo]

Oh good, I was wondering what a prequel story about Cameron might be like.