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One Hour One Life

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2018 5:41 am
by Farquaar
Like most of you, I thought that the survival game formula was dead. We were all tired of crafting and mining and logging. We all thought there was nothing else you could add, and the whole genre would stagnate as shovelware games poured onto Steam Greenlight.

In comes ...
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http://onehouronelife.com/

One Hour One Life is a game where you start off as a helpless infant. How your game plays depends entirely on the circumstances in which you are born. You might be born to a caring mother in a functional town, or you might be born to some broad who abandons you in the woods. It's all up to chance whether you grow old enough to wean off your mother's teat.

You see, every minute of game-time has you age up one year. If you survive your infancy and early childhood, you'll become a self-sustaining adult. If you're lucky, you might find an adult wise enough to know that he needs to train his replacement when he dies. Then, once you've found your calling, you take the spot of the oldster that trained you. Then, you try to find someone to take after when you're gone. Your goal is to make things just a little bit better for the next generation of little turds that come along before you kick the bucket at age 60 (assuming you survive that long).

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Settlement building is very complex and involved, and there's a steep learning curve, but this works to the game's advantage. Even a superstar player can't sustain an entire village- the work has to be delegated for the settlement to thrive. You might spend your life as a compost farmer, but even as you mix sheep dung and crop refuse to pass on to the gardeners, you'll see your parents' generation finish their life's work, your siblings and cousins scatter across the village as they find their callings, and young whippersnappers running about looking for a purpose. Doing your job and making sure the clueless kids know what's going on are equally important in ensuring your village survives and grows.

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The game I think is in a very special place right now. There's just been a huge influx of players (myself included) who are just clueless enough to actually simulate being born into a strange new world where they haven't the slightest idea how the mechanics work. While the game's wiki is a great resource, you'll get to experience being taught by other players that were just as ignorant as you twenty minutes ago, and teach your newfound wisdom onto the next one. I'm not sure how long that experience will last, but it's definitely worth picking up if you're interested.

Some links to see if this game is up your alley:

Criken and co. act like fools and enjoy the resulting chaos. First look I had at the game. I bought it the next day
[youtube]RcdlfqsdwDs[/youtube]

Trailer for the game by the dev, if you want to some insight his design philosophy
[youtube]mT4JktcVQuE[/youtube]

Re: One Hour One Life

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2018 11:30 pm
by PKPenguin321
looks an awful lot like Don't Starve

Re: One Hour One Life

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2018 11:50 pm
by Shadowflame909
PKPenguin321 wrote:looks an awful lot like Don't Starve
If the random board of 4chan and Don't Starve had a baby. It's quite raunchy.

Re: One Hour One Life

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 6:05 am
by Incomptinence
Mostly an exercise in pure futility played this before it came to steam and it is purposefully geared for mass famine with extremely specific ingredient required for say making a pile of compost that you absolutely require to farm.
If you do manage over tweaking of scarcity of necessary resources by the dev and item decay mechanics can steadily erase even the image of progress by groups over generations.

This is all on purpose as the Jason seems utterly terrified of the lack of content and depth once people stop struggling with the most basic things.

Re: One Hour One Life

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:45 pm
by delaron
Oh man I curse you all for telling me about this game. Ive been sucked into it fully. I love learning how to play and the drama that unfolds.

Re: One Hour One Life

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 6:53 am
by Farquaar
delaron wrote:Oh man I curse you all for telling me about this game. Ive been sucked into it fully. I love learning how to play and the drama that unfolds.
Glad I could help!

Re: One Hour One Life

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 1:55 pm
by baconman
Incomptinence wrote:Mostly an exercise in pure futility played this before it came to steam and it is purposefully geared for mass famine with extremely specific ingredient required for say making a pile of compost that you absolutely require to farm.
If you do manage over tweaking of scarcity of necessary resources by the dev and item decay mechanics can steadily erase even the image of progress by groups over generations.

This is all on purpose as the Jason seems utterly terrified of the lack of content and depth once people stop struggling with the most basic things.
Yeah, I've been on the fence about the game for a bit and this is the reason. That, and the fact that it's hard to understand what kind of an impact you made in your life and if it ever became something. As long as the gameplay itself is fun I could be willing to look past that, and it sounds like people agree that it is on here at least.