Can you survive One Single Life?
One Single Life plays as its preaches - an iOS downloadable game that offers you a solitary life to complete. Mess up, and that's it, game over. For real. The game locks.
The game plays out as a simple 2D platformer. You play as Average Joe, who has to jump from one skyscraper roof to another - touch the screen once to run, again to jump.
It feels much like the iPhone version of Mirror's Edge in play style, but that game was a serene pool compared to the tension this title brings - work has come to a near standstill at the GR offices this afternoon as the team have tried their luck surviving.
The complexity comes from not only from gauging the arc of your jump between the increasingly difficult angles across the game's ten levels, but knowing that you've only one chance to make it through. The game tracks every player's attempt at each level, with a billboard at every stage's start detailing the percentage of players before you that died attempting it.
And here's the hook: once you die, that's it, game over. Your progress is locked - no continues, no extra lives, nothing. You can't simple restart the game. The game for you is over. (You do have one option to keep playing - delete the App from your phone, and download it again.)
Note though this version of the game is free - though developer FreshTone Games discussed charging for it originally, that has been potentially shifted to the tournament edition of the game that's currently under development by the company.
You're offered a chance to test each level as many times as you wish within a simulator practice room before going for the real thing. But the real thing, according to Anthony O'Dempsey, Director of FreshTone Games, is to make players feel alive.
"The concept grew from a burning desire to capture the raw emotions we experience in real life but yet rarely see in computer games; anxiety, exhilaration, and genuine tension. I wanted to make a game that forces me to answer that most honest of questions; Do I have what it takes when it matters most?"
We asked the developer about the upcoming Tournament Edition in an interview, that will soon be published on the site, and it had this to say:
"We're even more excited about this game and even though it will feature replayability, the core concept of 'a single life really does matter' is still very much at the heart of our design here too."
You can find out if you have balls of steel right now, by downloading the game for free from here.
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