Lose/Lose: Shoot to Kill (Your Files)

September 29th, 2009 by: Technabob

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I’ve seen some weird mini games in my time, but this one might just take the cake. While the gameplay mechanics of Lose/Lose might look like any other space-alien-shooter, the consequences of playing incorrectly are so much greater.

You see, every time you shoot an alien, you lose. That’s because each alien represents a randomly selected file on your computer’s hard drive. And each successful shot deletes the chosen file. Now what sort of fun is that? Except maybe on someone else’s computer, right?

Zach Gage, the creator of Lose/Lose, explains the seemingly meaningless gameplay as follows: “By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions. As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives. At what point does our virtual data become as important to us as physical possessions? If we have reached that point already, what real objects do we value less than our data? What implications does trusting something so important to something we understand so poorly have?”

So I guess the point is that you’re not supposed to kill the aliens at all. So if  you manage to ram yourself into an alien and your man dies, you’re rewarded with the best part of the game – the game deletes its own executable. Whee.

Download Lose/Lose at your own risk.

Me, I’m sticking to Uncharted 2.

[via Sensible Erection via TIGSource]