This is a move. As you know, this isn’t a new apartment. This is a new apartment.
This is a move, which is one of those words that gets used all the time in the gaming space and, like the word “move” in general, it is used a lot in gaming. This is a move also happens to be the title for a new game, Deathloop, due out in late ‘09.
Deathloop is a game I have been a fan on and playing for years now. I just got an invite to the game’s alpha and have been pretty much hanging out in front of the screen since it launched. I was actually a little disappointed when I got the invite, because I wanted to see a new game, but I can’t say I was disappointed when I saw the title. Deathloop has the look and feel of a game I’ve been wanting to play for ages.
Deathloop is a time-lock game, which means the game is only as long as you have left to play it. The goal is to use the game as a way to stay alive, so the story will be told in the time-locked game loop. The story is told in five chapters through the eyes of Colt Vahn, who has no memory of the events of his past, only the events that have happened to him, and his actions that have led to this point.
The game uses the concept of time-locking to show an immersive story. This is a mechanic that’s been used in other games for ages. The story is told at your own pace and you don’t even need to be aware of what you’re doing. As the game progresses, you use the various powers and other methods to keep Colt alive longer. The only way you know its happening is the constant flashing of the time-lock indicator on your screen.
In the last bit of the trailer we see Colt jump into a boat and paddle a little bit. As the boat drifts off, the ship will change and the indicator will flash. This is in reference to the time-lock indicator in the game.
The first time I played Deathloop I was playing at a friend’s house and I was playing on the couch. The game was about two hours in and I was playing alone. As a result I didn’t really have the opportunity to watch the trailer. The final part of the trailer is the boat, but I saw the boat drifting off and realized that it was moving at a different speed (as if it was in a time-loop).
A time-loop is a continuous movement that is not in any one place at a time. It’s like the movie The Matrix where Neo and Morpheus were being transported through time. At the same time as Neo is moving at a different speed, Morpheus is also moving at a different speed. It’s sort of like how time looping works in The Matrix. The only difference is that the Matrix is a computer simulation that is being watched over by a human.
So far two of the eight Visionaries have been killed, but the fate of the rest is unknown. The time-looping system seems to be set up so that once a villain is killed, the time-looping system will move to the next villain and continue to repeat the process until the end of the universe is reached. It’s hard to think of a better system for a game than this.
The game seems to be working in part because it’s being played online. If the player is playing with other people, they are less likely to notice the time loop and thus are less likely to be aware of the time looping. The idea of a game based around time-looping is so much fun because it has the potential to be both relaxing and entertaining.
