One Chance

[weemadando]

OK, so this is at least a month out of date now, but I haven't seen anyone else bring it up here in the meantime.

One Chance - at Newgrounds

PLAY THE GAME BEFORE READING ON. It only takes 10-15 minutes.



Here is a game where you have a story told to you in an almost entirely visual way, which is powerful and has the potential to be devastating. I damn near cried when I saw the consequence of one of my actions.

I think that it tells a story more effectively and conveys emotion more intensely than most RPGs manage to, despite having characters hang around for 40 hours and having conversations longer than this entire game.

So, what do you think?

[adam_grif]

The game's only draw is that you can only "play" it once, and I've put "play" in quotes for a reason. There isn't a game here. It's just a series of binary choices that don't end up amounting to much. I ran through it about 3 weeks ago. As for the pretentious art non-games, I much preferred this other one whose name I forgotten where you are some sort of alien and you're running along with this family protecting them from some kind of war. Was a lot more moving than this one was, despite having no words at all.

[Uraniun235]

You can easily defeat the "no replay" function of the game by using something like Firefox's Private Browsing.


Basically the only way to find a cure is to go to work at every opportunity. Any deviation and you won't find the cure. Your wife will commit suicide, and most/all of the human population will die except you and your daughter. In my opinion it's ambiguous as to whether your daughter even survives.

If you sleep with the co-worker, or go to work on the day that opportunity comes up, your wife commits suicide.

If you spend all of your time with your family, eventually you go back to work and another co-worker goes crazy and tries to either kill you, or (if you press space at the right moment to disarm him) runs off and murders your family.

[Stofsk]

I went to work all the time except for the last time, opting to go to the park with my daughter instead, where we both died.

[Aura]

Wow that was definitely interesting.

I went to work 5 of the 7 days. 1 day was spent watching someone commit suicide on roof of the lab (I doubt that counts as going to work). The other was taking my daughter to the park on the 2nd to last day and she died right there. Its not exactly gut wrenching stuff, but there was decent amount of pathos to it. I might of whimpered when I saw my wife dead in the tub.

[PeZook]

I found it massively retarded.

What, clinical trials didn't find out the drug KILLS EVERYONE?

Please...

[Chaotic Neutral]

I found it massively retarded.

What, clinical trials didn't find out the drug KILLS EVERYONE?

Please...

No, not kills everyone, kills everything. Bacteria, plants, animals, everything.

[PeZook]

Yes, exactly. Which means every test subject it was ever tried on would have fucking died, thus the thing would never get deployed.

[Stark]

Yes, exactly. Which means every test subject it was ever tried on would have fucking died, thus the thing would never get deployed.

What if it takes longer than 7 days to kill anything?

[PeZook]

Oh, right! Then I guess the story makes perfect sense.

More to the point, I didn't find it especially epic or heart-wrenching. Maybe it was the fact the "choices" were pretty obvious to me (It's not like the guy's work was more important than anything, right?), even after the suicide.

Also, the guy somehow manages to save the park with his cure despite plants being the first things to start dying

[weemadando]

You can easily defeat the "no replay" function of the game by using something like Firefox's Private Browsing.

I'm amazed that it was you and not AG who failed at this thread.

[Losonti Tokash]

ITT: Ando informs us that telling people how to get around a lame gimmick in a flash game is "failing the thread."

[Uraniun235]

The first time through is okay, but replays are pretty tedious. I'm sure someone else out there would have been curious as to what the result of other paths would have been, and I wanted to spare them the chore of dragging through it again and again like I did.


I didn't find it particularly heartwrenching or touching. But hey, Ando said "play the game before reading on" so it's not like I spoiled anything, right?

What did you almost cry at, Ando? Was it going home after cheating on your wife and finding her in the bathtub in her own blood? Or was it the double murder of your family by your crazed co-worker?

[weemadando]

The first time through is okay, but replays are pretty tedious. I'm sure someone else out there would have been curious as to what the result of other paths would have been, and I wanted to spare them the chore of dragging through it again and again like I did.


I didn't find it particularly heartwrenching or touching. But hey, Ando said "play the game before reading on" so it's not like I spoiled anything, right?

What did you almost cry at, Ando? Was it going home after cheating on your wife and finding her in the bathtub in her own blood? Or was it the double murder of your family by your crazed co-worker?

No, it was when my character was saying that they were so close, so instead of going to the park on the last day, I had the hope that I might achieve something and took my daughter to work, where she died alone in the hallway of the disease while I died alone in the lab.

And I made the point about "failing the thread" because the whole point of the game is to have a unique experience. Getting around it is kind of missing that point.

[Stark]

ITT: Ando informs us that telling people how to get around a lame gimmick in a flash game is "failing the thread."

Well the 'lame gimmick' is like the core of the 'experience' or whatever; since there are no stats and no replays to cheese it, fat nerds can't break the game down into a spreadsheet so discussions around what you did and what results you got could actually exist.

Sadly its really basic so not very interesting.

[Artemas]

when i played it i sort of had the inkling that going to work everyday was probably the best option, given the name and its summary, but instead i decided that i would take the first day off because i didn't want to game it. I went to work the rest of the time except the very end, when i took my daughter to the park. Its interesting that i felt that my job was hopeless enough that i decided to say 'fuck it' at the very end, thus achieving more emotional turmoil from me in a game than literally any other game.

Using routine helped develop an attachment to everything in the world. From the house and how it changes, to the drive to work, by the very end you've seen it all change, but also have grown use to them in some way. Some games try a "before and after" approach, wherein a scene or locale will be shown (usually) all of two times, removing any possibility to really have the areas mean anything, beyond tactical considerations. Ignoring the rest of the stupidity of blops, the invasion scenes worked because they were either very common locales (burger kings and strip malls) or well known buildings (D.C.). As such, the game draws on already present attachment. One Chance actually builds the attachment you have itself, although i'm not sure that many other games (or gamers) would have the patience to sit through the same shit 7 times in a row to develop a routine. On the other hand, an empty house, or saferoom etc don't quite cut it, you need something to make it your own. The safehouses in GTAIV or Far Cry 2 were just places to save your game, but people get all sorts of connection to their fucking houses in Oblivion or Fallout.