Six-Chamber Champion

Six-Chamber Champion was written for "The 371-in-1 Klik & Play Pirate Kart II: Klik Harder" (it was one of the non-Klik & Play games, obviously) with development time limited to 2 hours. The resulting compact game lets you indulge in a round of Russian Roulette, and it doesn't beat about the bush. You and your opponent are seated, a gun loaded with one bullet is placed before you, then an armed referee and a bloodthirsty crowd watch over the pair of you as you take turns putting the gun against your head and pulling the trigger. The survivor will walk away with €1 million. There is no extraneous story or detail, just visceral suspense ala The Deer Hunter. A few other actions might occur to you and you can try them en route.

The game is cleanly programmed and operates only in the service of the situation, so player reaction to the whole thing isn't steered. It turns out that Interactive Fiction's delivery method of breaking reality up into tiny discrete steps might as well have been designed to play virtual Russian Roulette. It works very well here to create suspense and excitement, and to elongate individual moments. I found my fingers reluctant to commit to entering the PULL TRIGGER command that could blow my brains out each time. The outcome is randomised whenever you restart, and I was surprised to find that the reluctance effect wasn't significantly diminished on replays.

This game does exactly what it says on the box, and it does it well, so there's not much guesswork involved in deciding whether you might be interested in playing it or not. While having a gun at one's head might sharpen the mind wonderfully, sanity advocates will quickly point out that there's no shortage of less dangerous ways of reminding oneself that life is infinitely interesting and exciting. Though it must be admitted that those other ways don't give you a 50/50 shot at winning a huge pile of money right away.

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