Four Minute Warning is a small (very small) two screen videogame that tasks the player with collecting a few objects to take with them into a fallout shelter, all within the 4 minutes from the warning siren going off to the nuclear missiles hitting.
What sounds like a fairly simple task is made all the more difficult by having the play areas be rather fiddly and unforgiving mazes of clutter. But also, that’s sort of the point. The game expects the player to fail, this is the onset of nuclear armageddon after all. And, indeed, if the player doesn’t fail at their task then eventually, radiation gets to them anyway.
Whatever happens, that’s it. Over. Bummer, huh?
It’s a pro peace, anti nuclear war, anti Tory and anti Reagan vignette. It is unsubtle in every possible way and it’s a game that wants to remind the player that voting for warmongering rightwing hawks probably isn’t the best idea ever.
Part of what I find fascinating about it is it’s the sort of game that would have sat perfectly at home in the indie flash/art game period of a decade and a bit back, except it was made and released in 1985. It’s almost uncanny how well it would fit in the latter half of the 2000’s if you just swapped a few names round here and there and maybe had a black – rather than white – background.
Admittedly, these days nuclear war seems a bit further down the list of worries of where our more immediate existential threats are going to come from but still, I think “don’t vote tory” is as relevant a message as it ever was.
“I’ve seen so many fellow devs voice discontentment about being unable to do it as a hobby or pursue their actual passion (game dev) after exhausting their mental energy 40 hours a week, basically every week, to be able to afford the basics.
I’d argue the real problem isn’t learning to divide your time spent on your hobby but rather the impossibility of dividing your time in everything.”
For lots of reasons, this is a post I’ve needed to reread fairly often in recent weeks because I’ve got so much going on (still) that I need to go easier on myself when the most I can manage to do right now is lie down and watch a film in the down time.
(Incidentally, Cohost has been an absolute beacon of peace for me too. I forgot how much I missed longer form posts and braindumps, and more importantly not feeling the need to post at every interval. It is obviously very early Tumblr in vibe and you know what? That’s more than fine)
I’ve never really felt the urgent need to go ducking into a more recent block matching game when despite more than a few attempts from EA to trash it, Bejeweled 3 (or Bejeweled Classic as it is these days) has more than amply filled the niche for me.
However, I’ve been kinda more exhausted than my usual exhausted self (which runs at a baseline of 7 exhaustions out of 10 on a good day) and figured why not, so a quick rummage through Apple Arcade to find something and Simon’s Cat Storytime looked chill enough. One yoink and a few days later and oh sweet baby Molyneux, am I ever glad I grabbed this on Arcade rather than a game in a similar vein because it’s pretty damn evil.
And look, I know I’m the last to know here! I’ve sort of known that mainstream casual has been a shitshow for a while and I remember Em occasionally popping one on here and there when her more usual stuff was a bit too much and complaining about whatever one they gave a go of that time round but still, it’s a pretty grim state of affairs when this is the main face of games to the general public and that face is the face of non-stop exploitation.
Aside from the kinda middle class cute that is Simon’s Cat giving the game the appearance of being more gentle, it’s how absolutely unrelenting it all is. It. Never. Stops.
There’s always another currency to be drained, another temptation, the player perpetually kept on the back foot, another offer, another streak to keep up. Always. Never stopping. Of course the very core of the design has to feed all this so it’s going to be a game that’s happy to put the player on a losing streak, happy to let them churn through coins trying again and again, fighting the random nature of the game, forever convincing the player that this next time, they can totally beat the level and when they don’t? No biggy because it makes a number go down and a number going down amongst all this feeds addictions.
That in game purchases don’t even exist in this Apple Arcade release, it’s remarkable. Even without a way to empty your pockets, here’s a game that still manages to feel expressly exploitative. It’s depressing.
It’s depressing not just because of the sheer exploitation but because the effort that’s gone in to dressing this all up is remarkable. This stuff can’t be done like this – looking and sounding this good – without people spending a lot of time and a lot of money putting it together. Think of how many nice things we could have if that talent and expense wasn’t put to work on something ultimately designed to extract money from punters in the most distracting manner possible.
In some regards, I kinda choose to be perpetually shocked by stuff like this because I don’t want to ever be fine with it. And I’m certainly not implying that this stuff is the domain of casual games only. I mean, FIFA (or whatever EA have decided to call it when you’re reading this) exists, right? Games don’t half like to do some really shitty things. It’s also definitely not new, I’ve just wisely avoided things until I suddenly decided not to.
And yes, I know, I know, “Rob, you remember arcade games, mate?” and of course I do. I know videogames have forever been finding ways of getting someone to empty their pockets but this past decade or so has (much like in everything else, I guess) seen this stuff rocket out of hand.
And yes, I know, I know, “someone in games gets pissy at casual” is an eternal part of videogames. Fair enough, I’ll cop to that. Just think of it as my turn now. And yes, I also know that there’s a whole spectrum of videogames out there, some less, some more exploitative. I’m having a moan here, leave me alone.
Cats deserve better than this crap. Even fictional ones.
You are reading Rob’s Punching Robots Club
The online home of Rob Fearon, disabled videogame maker, games journalist, crap film watcher, gobshite and doodler. Rob’s been around games a very, very long time now and Punching Robots Club is their personal blog featuring whatever nonsense takes their fancy.
Sometimes it’s a sketch, a review, an article about videogames, a pointer to something Rob finds cool. Whatever, really. Expect anything, Rob’s tired of being a brand online and so it’s just stuff and things these days. Nice stuff and things, mind you.
