So what if I told you that a game you have no control over — a game that is essentially entirely random and isn’t even a proper game dammit — is one of the funniest things you’ll play this week? A Shot In The Dark by Uncommon, part of Castle Paradox’s laudable Terrible Games Contest 2009*, is just brilliant. You press left Shift or right Shift to ‘choose’ the course of ten characters’ lives — but the game basically ignores you and throws out whichever ending it likes. This is what all videogames will be like when the sentient AI has enslaved us all. Thanks to the randomness — and the superb writing — this is one game you will genuinely WANT to play over and over again. Gogogo. Play A Shot In The Dark (Windows download)
* and you really should get over there and download these so-called ‘terrible’ games, because surprise surprise they ain’t that terrible at all if you take them in the correct spirit. Which is that they’re, er, terrible. OOOH PARADOX.
Hi! As the creator of the game, I wanted to thank you for the kind review. From the timing, I guess you got this from the TIGSource post, so it’s good to see that someone liked the game, since the comments there skewed toward the negative.
Anyway, just wanted to mention that, in a sense, the game actually does set up one button as splendid and the other as stupid, so the player does technically decide which ending they receive, just not in any way that matters. It’s kind of like a two-card monte that nobody wins.
Aha — If I’d have realised that before, I could have seen all the endings a lot faster! But I enjoyed pootling my way through it multiple times. Made me laugh lots. People who don’t like it are wrong wrong wrong.