I was browsing some Flash games on Newgrounds, as I usually do when I feel like immersing myself in that kind of living museum left over from the golden age of browser gaming. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just letting myself be carried away by the strange covers and odd names one finds on those endless lists.
Among so many absurd shooters and improvised platformers, I came across a title that caught my eye: You Only Live Once. I found it funny. I thought it was a cheap joke, something like "YOLO" before YOLO was cool. Without giving it much thought, I clicked on it.
What appeared before me was, apparently, a very ordinary platformer. A mustachioed character with a generic protagonist look, enemies that looked like a parody of Mario's Goombas, repetitive music that seemed like it could have been made in five minutes, and a first level so easy I could almost play it with my eyes closed.
I moved forward without rushing.
Jumping from side to side, convinced I was playing a filler game to waste a couple of minutes.
Then the moment arrived. In a silly jump, I misjudged the distance and fell into a trap. Nothing serious, I thought. The typical "Game Over" screen appeared, and I prepared to hit "Play" and try again. But instead of restarting the level, the screen changed to something else:
a scene where my character was dead, his girlfriend crying inconsolably at the graveside, the police cordoning off the scene, and the villain on duty celebrating his victory with total impunity. I laughed, thinking it was a joke from the game, a small touch of dark humor before it let me play again.
I refreshed the page... and to my surprise, there was the same scene, identical, unchanged. There was no way to return to the beginning. I closed and reopened the browser, tried in another tab, even tried quickly deleting my history...
but nothing. You Only Live Once wasn't playing around: it had made it clear it wasn't lying with its title. You Only Live Once.
The feeling it left me with was strange. On one hand, I was frustrated that something so simple had beaten me with such an absurd rule; on the other, I thought it was brilliant. In a world where dying is part of learning, where every defeat is an excuse to come back stronger, this game robbed me of that comfort.
It didn't give me second chances, it didn't let me learn from my mistake. And that, although it may seem cruel, made that short playthrough carry a weight that other, much more complex games never achieve.
In the end, I closed the tab with a mixture of laughter and resignation. I hadn't simply played a cheap platformer, Well.. yeah but I had participated in a small experiment that mocked my expectations and broke one of the most sacred rules of video games.
And the strangest thing is that, although it lasted only a couple of minutes, You Only Live Once stayed in my memory much longer than many titles I've played for hours.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH, SEE YOU
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