The game is
Passage and it
only takes five minutes to play. And at the end...you turn old and grey, and die.
A quick description from the creator:
Passage is meant to be a memento mori game. It presents an entire life, from young
adulthood through old age and death, in the span of five minutes. Of course, it's a game,
not a painting or a film, so the choices that you make as the player are crucial. There's no
"right" way to play Passage, just as there's no right way to interpret it. However, I had
specific intentions for the various mechanics and features that I included.
As I said before, there's no right way to play this game. Part of the goal, in fact, is to get
you to reflect on the choices that you make while playing. The rewards in Passage come in
the form of points added to your score...
Yes, you could spend your five minutes trying to accumulate as many points as possible,
but in the end, death is still coming for you. Your score looks pretty meaningless hovering
there above your little tombstone. This treatment of character death stands in stark
contrast with the way death is commonly used in video games (where you die countless
times during a given game and emerge victorious---and still alive---in the end). Passage is
a game in which you die only once, at the very end, and you are powerless to stave off this
inevitable loss...
You have to download the game (2MB), which is available for the pc or mac. It's worth
checking out as it doesn't offer the level of entertainment you're used to as a gamer, but
does encourage quite a bit of reflection.
Enjoy.
Here is a picture of Barrak Obama if you ever need it.