100,000 Years

(I wrote the original version of this review in my blog upon this game's initial 2013 IFComp release.)

100,000 years is a sci-fi Twine piece about galactic-sized spans of time. It is easily worth any comp-goer's time to try as it is very short. I almost said "ironically very short," but that would have been silly as the smallness/largeness thing is obviously a feature.

The goings-on in a chunk of the universe are described in a few lines of verse. Clicking the left arrow takes you 100,000 years into the past while the right arrow takes you the same distance into the future. Changes over that time period are then described, but the arrows remain, ready to move you forward or backward again. The result is a tiny existential text toy. What you discover if you go far enough in either direction is equally likely to make you feel more a part of the universe or just less significant. The achievement of 100,000 years is that it can touch on those feelings quickly and with such a simple device, though the whole piece is definitely short-lived.

This game is a one-trick pony. At first, I thought it would be a random text generator like Begscape. However, it turned out to be much simpler.

Once I thought it through, I enjoyed it. Not much else to say.

I give this two stars because the writing is pretty good, in its self-imposed succinctness, and the story ties together well. But the premise is hardly original, and this isn't even a CYOA: there are no choices.

There is not a whole lot to 100,000 Years. It is basically a hypertext adaption of the hoary old SF premise suggested by the title. No, not that one, the other one, with the (Spoiler - click to show)space aliens and (Spoiler - click to show)repeating timelines and junk. It's competently implemented within its very small limits, but unfortunately it shares a problem with lazy SF in that it barely uses its premise, either as a metaphor to tell us something about ourselves or just to entertain. Even a bit of randomness in the text might make 100,000 Years a bit more meaty. Still, it's probably worth a look. Just don't expect too much.