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BLACKOUT

by Playahead Games

2022

Web Site

(based on 4 ratings)
3 reviews

About the Story

You are a new arrival to a small town with grand plans to focus on your art. One day, you awaken to an unorthodox message on your screen. The world is ending! What will you do with your last week?


Game Details


Awards

6th Place, La Petite Mort - English - ECTOCOMP 2022

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Number of Reviews: 3
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Writer's block party, November 1, 2022
by jakomo
Related reviews: ectocomp2022

The technological Singularity has arrived, and has decided the human race needs to be deleted. But has very kindly given us a week's notice to get our affairs in order first. You're a writer in a new town, deciding each day whether to knuckle down and write your final masterpiece, or go out and experience the sights, sounds and people of your neighbourhood as they come to terms with the approaching apocalypse. Essentially, this is two separate narratives that require you to go "all in" on one route to experience the stories to their conclusions. Trying to alternate between writing days and going out days simply yields two half-completed stories instead of one full one when your time runs out. Which mechanically fits with the central theme of Blackout: you can't do everything, there just isn't enough time. This is either intended as a broad life lesson: "life is more satisfactory when you can focus on what you know you can achieve rather than what society says you should achieve", or a darkly comic metaphor about writer's block and missing deadlines.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
What matters in the end?, November 21, 2022
by Draconis
Related reviews: Ectocomp 2022

The Singularity has come. The world (as you know it) will end in seven days. What will you do?

This is a melancholic, somewhat mournful short story with a choice-based interface. It has the odd interface gimmick that the first click on any link just distorts it into a blurred mess, and you have to click it a second time to actually do anything; I’m not sure what purpose this serves, except to make certain “click a link within three seconds or the game will do it for you” choices even more annoying.

Interface aside, I enjoyed the story a lot. You have seven days left to live. There’s only one choice: what will you spend those days doing? Going out and interacting with the people around you? Or staying in and trying to work on your art? Neither of them really means anything, in the end—neither your work nor your friends will outlive you. So what meaning will you make of them? The writing is sad and bleak, but also more than a little bit hopeful, in an existential way.

Like with Cell 174, this is a work that I’d call a short story rather than a game. The focus is really on the writing, and what it encourages the player to think about. If you knew this was the end of everything, that nothing in your world would exist a week from now, what would you want to be doing? What would matter to you? The game somewhat tries to offer an answer—if you try to (Spoiler - click to show)split your time between writing and socializing your character regrets it all at the end—and I somewhat wish it didn’t. But there is plenty to contemplate, all the same, and this work has a particular feel that’s unlike anything else in the comp.

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It's the end of the world. What do you want to do?, November 14, 2022
by MathBrush
Related reviews: less than 15 minutes

This is a speed-written IF game using the Twine system. In it, the singularity has happened, but technology is giving humans exactly 7 days to do what they want with their lives before being assimilated.

It's a sobering situation. The emotional stakes are subtly raised by changing the background color every day.

This is a speed-IF, so options are limited. The main options here are to write or to go outside. I varied back and forth between them, and had an ending that to me was satisfying.

Shoutout to the very specific descriptions of listening to local indie bands, felt very realistic.

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