Seven Minutes – Tuuka Virtanen
Seven Minutes is a little gem of a game brought to my attention by the Gamers With Jobs. This article will spoil the game completely so seriously download and play it first. (Go on, it’s only seven minutes long!)
The premise is simple though bizarre: a giant, ethereal, disembodied, three-eyed head yells at you not to touch the blue fire. Naturally you touch it. The head then tells you that your world will end in the titular seven minutes and that you shouldn’t leave the room. Naturally you leave the room. What follows is a tricky but delightful 2D platform-game in which the Head continues to taunt you, reminding you that your journey is pointless as you’re going to die soon, and my, isn’t the time going fast?
After ignoring the head’s commands we find out it has been telling us the truth the whole time: at the end the head re-appears to tell us "There is nothing. NOTHING." And that’s it. Game over. We still know nothing about the seemingly omnipotent being and its quasi-nihilistic ravings, but strangely that’s ok. The charm is in how much is left to the imagination, the stylish design, tidy execution, how little time you have to get bored, and the quiet chuckle of the anti-climax.
But apparently that’s not the end. The creator tells us we’ve not beaten the game until we’ve seen the credits, which is achieved quite simply: don’t leave the room. After seven minutes the credits roll and that’s the real ending.
So, progressing through the game in the traditional manner presents you with no reward at the end; remaining inactive and doing nothing means you "win". But then why do we play games? To beat the game or to play the game? Before I stumbled across the real ending, I couldn’t help but think the Nothing ending isn’t really nothing. Really you get to hear the punch-line of the joke and you get to a little something from the disembodied head that’s analogous to a cut-scene. Or maybe that’s what they’re saying, that cut-scenes are really nothing and there never is any real reward at the end of games. Perhaps a defeat-ending more fitting with what seems to be the point of the game would simply be a dead end room – no visit from the head and no actual defeat-ending at all. But the real ending makes me think that’s not the creator’s intent.
The head spent the whole time telling me there was nothing at the end, yet I still ploughed on through. Did I not need a reward in order to enjoy the game, or was it because I assumed the head was lying? Certainly the aim is on a return play-through of a game, the ‘reward-ending’ is pretty much immaterial to me and it’s the play experience there for. Much the same is true of films I watch for a second time: I’m not watching to find out what happens again, I’m watching to enjoy the characters. A similar thought occurs when I reach a final boss that is too hard to be worth bothering with, the best bit of the game is already over and I just quit after a couple of tries, why put myself through it? So I don’t really play games for cut-scenes or to beat them; I play games because the act of playing them is enjoyable in itself. In this case the real ending is ultimately hollow, and if I were to play Seven Minutes again I think I would surely be defeated, for obvious reasons.