It’s a mechanic as old as games themselves: perform poorly and you lose a “life”. Experimental Dutch title GlitchHiker went a little further, though: perform poorly and the whole game died.
An entrant in the Dutch Global Game Jam 2011 earlier this year, GlitchHiker was tied to a central server which was programmed to literally destroy the game with each life lost. Players could earn lives by playing well, but if they didn’t, the game would experience increasing defects until it was rendered unplayable.
Despite a weekend of people trying their best to “save” GlitchHiker, it is now no more. Well, you can download the thing if you want, but it won’t work.
GlitchHiker [Glitchhiker, via Gamefreaks]
Jake
Monday, July 11, 2011 at 8:27 PMThat’s interesting. But ultimately a poor idea. Just sounds like a silly gimmick to me. Like that game where death is permanent.
lolinternet
Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:16 PMYou mean life?
Exaemo
Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:22 PMYeah…life is a gimmick, and then you die.
Chazz
Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:22 PMAny talk of them offering the game in it’s original state for those who weren’t aware of it so they could try for themselves?
Braaains
Monday, July 11, 2011 at 11:19 PMI think that would probably defeat the purpose of the experiment in the first place.
Chazz
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 8:30 AMYeah but it sounds really cool and I wanna play it! :P
Reoh
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 4:30 PMThere’s a Minecraft save going around like that. It’s not hard coded in but the premise is that when you die you’re supposed to exit the game, and send it to a friend. So each time a new person spawns there, they see the remnants of the previous players.