Your default platformer stance is beset by a floating white head who comes off like some kind of pranic demon. He tells you not to proceed, which in the language of level design means, "come further, you don't really have a choice". This is the kind of catch-22 that, all too common in life, seems utterly absent in games - no matter what prickly situation your protagonist finds (usually) himself in, there's always a neat puzzle solution or flow path to get out of it. Not this time.
I feel like the satanic truth is underexplored in this medium. This game made me feel like this, particularly when her host entered her body. It hits the aesthetic like a carving knife through a sacrifice, replacing the redneck-ish satanic panic with a more geek-friendly kind of manic panic.
The movement is pretty predictable: walk left and right, jump with a button you'll figure out by trial and error. The level design is generally unpredictable -- trick walls and invisible platforms, falling spikes, death is a part of life, with more vigor here than we've seen since Planescape: Torment. Death is essential to deciphering the way forward. The mechanic here is the titular seven minutes, of which additional time is deducted every time you squelch. In the end though, it doesn't really matter.
BECAUSE YOU ARE DOOMED!
sinistar
the head kind of just wants to jump out and say BEWARE I LIVE, or I HUNGER
Yeah, it's kind of like
Yeah, it's kind of like Sinistar the platformer. I'd always thought that game was an interesting exception to the usual shooter fare.
The Big Fish
Doomed? Not quite. If anything, this reminded me of "The Wizard of Oz"-- just like Dorothy with her ruby slippers, we always have the power to go home/achieve ultimate power. The problem is just sitting still for seven minutes and not going on the big adventure you believe enlightenment comes attached with.
Win or play
Hm. Interesting that ignoring the game's content results in winning. I've seen that similar things done in adventure games -- for example, in Andrew Plotkin's A Change in the Weather, you can just rejoin your friends at the very beginning and get no worse an ending than you get by solving the puzzles. Or, a more extreme case: ctrl-w in Monkey Island. But no one regards these things as actually winning. You haven't really won unless you've solved the game's puzzles, you know? Seven Minutes, on the other hand, takes the position that the cheap solution and only the cheap solution is a victory.
I'm reminded a little of the Test of Truth in the Ultima VII expansion pack, "The Forge of Virtue", which consisted of a massive maze that was almost entirely a red herring, the actual solution being a secret door very near the entrance.
This game gave me The
This game gave me The Ultimate Power! for solving a pretty lame "riddle".
You know what's weird? If you stand against the "block" in the middle of the first room, and hug it and hold up, you sometimes get a really high jump. Maybe a glitch? Maybe the first step to a secret that will lead to an even better ending?
Seven Minutes to Enlightenment
Well, I finally played through and got the "good ending". One thing that struck me was how the game plays with trust. We're presented with a talking head that appears quite excited and derogatory towards us. Therefore, we're inclined not to trust it. However, in a sense, everything the head says is true. The true "riddle" of the game, therefore, lies in overcoming our own sense of mistrust.
A couple of other random things: I noticed in the credits that Cactus is listed as inspiration...heh. I also noticed that the authors appear to be Finnish. However, the game's content itself reminds me vaguely of Buddhism or Hinduism. And I noticed the same "huge jump" that Robert August de Meijer did...Oh, and the discussion about "simple ways to win", has anyone else played Adam Cadre's interactive fiction "9:05"? Now THAT is a game that does something interesting with your expectations.
Where is the fun?
How does "fun" actually factor into the game? I felt more enjoyment going through the platforming segments than I did not touching the computer. This raises the question of what victory actually amounts to in a game. Interesting.