Seven Minutes

I'll be sure to try this out over the weekend.

You know, I suspected it was something like that, and I haven't even downloaded the game yet.

It's "hidden" as white text on a quote's white background, so that you don't read spoilers on accident.

Edit ^ yeah. Especially because it only takes a few minutes of your life to complete. In fact perhaps you should do something else.

[size=20][color=#FF0000]Spoilers in plain view below![/color][/size]

So that we can discuss it without having to highlight the whole thread to read anything.

Spoilers begin:

Well I was too smart for my own good because when doing absolutely as the triops says and not touching his steaming ball for seven minutes meant the game wouldn't progress at all. When this happened I assumed I must've been wrong, and got right to the fake end where I got the confirmation that I was right in the first place, and had to wait another seven minutes after touching the ball.

Mechanical nonsense aside, this is a nice little counter to BioShock's illusions of choice in a predetermined story. There is actually choice here, but to choose not to play means there's no game, and this apparently constitutes a win. The problem is that in order for the game to work you first have to be disobedient and touch the steaming ball. After that any attempt to do as you're told, such as turn back, is physically prevented by the game unless you stay in the first room.

So I don't know, I'm confused by what the message is here. I'm very interested in your thoughts.

Thanks, adam, for your whiter-than-white comments above. I didn't get the Buddhism connection at first but then perhaps my lack of knowledge on the subject makes me truly enlightened. I think my real problem here is that the game undermines its own message. By playing the game you find out that to win you have to not play, making the game nothing more than a practical joke.

Edit: has Passage been a fringe buster yet? I'm sure it's had coverage here before I discovered GWJ, but that is a game that truly shows the repercussions of choice in a heart rending and quite beautiful fashion.

I thought the game was great. The music and atmosphere was excellent mix with the time element. The whole, don't move and you win thing, I never would have even though of if it was not for you guys. Either way, I had a blast with the platforming.

This game is really cool. I personally would have dropped a few hints around the beginning on what you were supposed to do instead of telling you at the very end (when you've already lost) but I guess that's part of the point.

I agree with the part about dying, especially how they use it for a couple of the puzzles, in particular the falling spike blocks level, that was pretty cool. Using something as simple as death as a tool of progression is interesting in and of itself. I wish more larger releases would consider this concept at sometime or another, at least past the "I'm just going to put my character in an impossible situation where he has to die" situation (Beginning of God of War 2 etc.) That being more of an interactive cut scene than using death as progression. At least in this game they actually gave you an alternate ending possibility to achieve the happy ending. If it had ended at the last room and death was the only option, than how is that different from gravity bone? Although people can argue about that ending too.

While I think it's a fairly clever game, and I do think it's worth playing, I think that we're getting close to the point where winning through inaction becomes something of a cliche in the art-game world.

Honestly, I thought that inaction might be the solution, but I expected it to be not even touching the ball in the first place. You know, like you're told.

I'm a huge fan of Braid and of art games in general. I don't have a problem with games doing something innovative or of attempting to use the medium of video games to convey deeper meanings or experiences. However, I refuse to believe that because a game is trying to be artistic that I cannot call it pretentious or intellectually lazy. If a game wants to be taken seriously as art, I will critique it and analyze it seriously as art.

To be fair, I initially said that the ending was pretentious. It is not unreasonable to say that a part of something is pretentious while liking the rest of it, however it is not fair to say that a part of something is pretentious without having seen that piece in context. It was poor form for me to have posted that without having yet played the game.

However, I did approach the game with an open mind, and I was dissatisfied with what I found. As I said before, I am critiquing this game in the same way that I would critique any other work of art be it a novel, movie, poem, or painting. I feel that almost any use of "victory through inaction" is pretentious, but I feel that that pretension could be earned in the proper context. I don't feel that this game earns its ending, but likewise I don't feel that it has much else to offer. While the atmosphere is well-done, the game is heavily dependent on its ending, and it's ending is pretentious.

I like the analogy of a key, but I don't think this addresses the game's inherent contradiction: that you are told to not touch the orb but must touch the orb in order to properly finish the game. When you complete the maze, you are reminded that you had been warned to not leave the first room, which is, of course, the big hint you need to unlock the game's ending, but you are not ever warned to not leave the first room; you are warned to not touch the blue orb but you still must do that to finish the game. You must disobey the instructions given to you in order to progress through the game but are chided at the end for having not obeyed the instructions you were given; the message is muddled.

Also, it doesn't make sense that after the first room you are told to turn around, to go back, but you cannot. If you let the timer run out in any room but the first, you receive the negative ending.

Respectfully, I disagree. I thought that this game's platforming, while not being as weak as the story, wasn't particularly strong. I don't want to repeat myself too much, since I already wrote a bit about the game mechanics, but I found that, for the most part, death wasn't used in the game in a way that was fair.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "falling spike blocks level," but I assume that you're referring to the seventh or eighth room where you have to go underneath a "bridge" of spiked blocks so that it will fall on you so that when you respawn you'll be able to move past that area. This was one of the few cases where, as Pyroman put it, death was used as a mechanic, like jumping. However, there were other areas, particularly later in the maze, when blocks would fall on you without any way of triggering them beforehand, requiring that you restart the room. This isn't puzzle-solving or jumping; this is a forced teleportation back to the beginning of the room and isn't any different from Ninja Gaiden's much-maligned exploding shuriken from off-camera. It forces you to replay sections of the game that you've already played—sections that are frequently quite difficult and that you may have struggled to advance past—for no other reason than to artificially delay your progress and run down the clock.

This would be reasonably acceptable had you been able to return to previous rooms, thereby setting up a mechanic that encourages you to turn back or else facing ever-increasing levels of difficulty, but as has been pointed out, you cannot go back. Once you have left the first room, which again, you are never warned to not do, you have little choice but to press forward, but the game punishes you unfairly for doing so.

Wow. what a debate. I downloaded this and played it without reading any comments, then I cheated and read the spoilers to find out the "secret."

The game is kinda fun, I'll give it that. I do agree with Mr. Greenbrier on a few things: the platforming, while difficult, is not challenging. It is not engaging. It requires little skill, only repetition. Some of it is interesting. But would it be interesting if we weren't aware the whole time that we're playing an "art game"? Do we hold this style of game to the same technical standard that we would a less stylistic platformer?

Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about arthouse games and "games as art." Bioshock is still what comes to mind as a good example: the brilliance of the message in no way overshadows the excellent gameplay. In Seven, the message seems to be a moot point: leave the room, don't leave the room, it doesn't really matter. The idea of winning through inaction is interesting, but I could take the idea and leave the game. I do think the game is worth noting for the idea, and I'm glad someone is doing something out of the norm with games.

I just played the game, and I have to agree with Adam.Greenbrier. Here's why:

Convinced?

Seriously, though, I think giving video games the John Cage treatment is ridiculous. It's a different medium for one thing, and I for one have never been convinced of the brilliance of a pianist sitting in front of a crowd playing nothing for four and half minutes in the first place.

There's a fine, fine line between saying "that's something that only an artist could have thought of" and saying "that's incredibly stupid." The problem is that too many people are so intellectually insecure that they're unwilling to say the latter when the situation calls for it because they're afraid some art establishment functionary will call them ignorant.

Well, I don't care if the guy who made the game thinks I "just don't get it." The fact that he even named the game "seven minutes" means that it's not only pretentious, but considering John Cage's 4'33" it's derivative as well. So while it may be art, it isn't good art.

Oh, and I also agree with everyone who criticised the platforming because of the trial-and-error nonsense. I've never liked T&E design-- which is one of the reasons why I tend to hate stealth action games-- and this one just takes it to an extreme. But I will say this for the developer; at least there was no life/checkpoint system. All you lose when the level screws you over is time.

I enjoyed the game for the variety of platforming mechanics, the music, and the art design. The first time, I only made it to the third room and kept dying. Second time through, I made it to the end of the platforming and enjoyed that ending quite well. I think the ways things were hidden and shown were interesting.

After a lot of trial and error in the beginning, I expected the end to also be challenging in this way, but it wasn't. While waiting the 7 minutes for the 'real' ending, I read through these comments and discovered a super jump ability where if you jump up a medium platform against a wall you jump up to the ceiling. Otherwise, this half of my experience wouldn't have been so fun. Who wants to wait 7 minutes?

The Buddhism refrences were pretty clear to me from the start, but I don't think they got in the way or made me upset with the game. I probably would have felt the same with Braid, except I heard Blow speak and hated him and his game pretty quickly.