Okay Geek Farm
One Chance - the game you can only play once... seriously
Ricardo Trejo
In a day in age where games like Heavy Rain take all the spotlight for their cinematic nature, it’s hard to imagine a flash game, whose visuals look like they belong on an Atari, could impress upon the gaming community so much the way it has in the past few days. And with a story whose decisions are permanent in every sense of the word, One Chance only gives you literally one chance to play it through.
One Chance revolves around Dr. Pilgrim, the man who found the cure for cancer. As you begin the game, you’re set up into this world of joy and celebration, only to be thrown back to reality when the cure ends up becoming the means to destroy every living thing on Earth.
A black, ominous screen with text breaks the ice, informing you that as Dr. Pilgrim, you only have 6 days to prevent the death of everyone on the planet. From day to day you are presented with different choices, various circumstances and people to talk to, that will in the long run effect what becomes of mankind.
And once the game ends, you must live with the ending you got… forever. Nope, there’s no redo - no replay feature, because One Chances creates a temp file hat acts as a “save file”, in a sense. But that being said, if you truly do want to play through it again, it’s as simple as deleting that file and going back to Newgrounds for another shot at saving humanity. Or you can just use the Incognito feature on Google Chrome’s browser to have infinite lives, so to speak.
The game only lasts about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on how much of the limited world you travel through. It’s an eye-opening experience, one of creativity and even regret. One Chance explores the world of possibility and limitations, giving full control to the player as to what will happen but also holding back enough information that it’s not completely see-through what each choice’s consquence will be. It’s realistic and sometimes even unnerving. The ending I got, while what I assume is the best one, left me feeling cold and even sad.
Kudos go AwkwardSilenceGames for coming up with a concept that, from my knowledge, has never been done before, and executing it perfectly.
