There is this game that only existed for less than a day, at some point back in 2013. It was made as part of LUDUM DARE #27, whose theme was "10 seconds". It was called Impetus, and until last week, it had basically become lost media. I want to talk about this game, why it matters to me, and how i worked with its author, @zerstoerer, to make sure it's not forgotten.
The gist of the game was simple. When you opened the page, you were presented with a picture of an unconscious and unnamed astronaut, with the blinking red light of a failing life support system. A big countdown was displayed, counting down from 10. The meaning was straightforward: if it reaches 0, she dies. At the bottom of the screen, a big button, that simply read "click to keep alive". If you clicked it, the countdown jumped back to 10.
But, after you finished taking all of this in, as you hurried to click the button, you would notice something: the countdown had already jumped back down to 10. This was because of the simple beauty of this game: everyone was playing to save the same person. Whenever anyone in the world would click this button, it would reset the clock to 10. Everyone was in this together.
For the next 12 hours or so, the entire world worked together to keep this fictional person alive, for no other reason than empathy and shared determination. And that brief moment was... i don't think "magical" is the right word? But it was special. It felt meaningful. To me it felt like it was redefining what games can be. But, the game ended, victim of its success: the increased traffic caused a brief outage, during which the site was no longer accessible for more than ten seconds. When the site came back up, she had died.
And... that was it. Several press articles praised the ephemeral game, and the world moved on.
Last week, when starting to slowly fill up my newly created backloggd account, i wondered if the IGDB had flash games and other website games. Turns out, it does! Which meant i could go and reminisce about some old indie games, such as my beloved One Chance.
That's when i recalled Impetus. I could not remember the name at first, and for a while, it seemed like the internet didn't either: despite my best efforts, no query about a "10 seconds" LUDUM DARE game seemed to return anything. What i ended up finding was something i had written at the time! With, beyond the name, more importantly, a link to a Tumblr post from the author, aptly described as a "postmortem"... but the post was gone. And so was the Tumblr account. But i now had both names: the game, and its author.
I contacted them on twitter, and thankfully, it turns out that they still had the text of the post! They provided a ton of material, and thanks to them we've managed to get Impetus on the IGDB. I'm happy to say that it is no longer lost media!
You can now:
- read about it on the IGDB;
- read a copy of @zerstoerer's postmortem;
- see what the game's end screen looks like, on its new hosting page
This game was special to me, and i'm happy that ten years later i got to contribute to it being remembered. Thanks for reading!