Passage

Today, while reading a few blogs, I discovered a tiny game (not quite a game, but keep reading) that changed my state of mind, and probably speeded up my heartbeat rate for a while. It's called Passage, and it's an old-fashioned side-scrolling game with a unique characteristic:

It represents your whole life during 5 minutes.

The game itself only lasts 5 minutes, then you die. It's a simple, yet complex maze where you control a young character. Eventually, this character will grow old, slowing down, and at the end, die. You can read the author's notes to become fully aware of what this game means, in it's full complexity.

At the start, you have the possibility to team up with someone else (your wife). But you can choose not to, and your character will walk faster and manage to get through mazes you couldn't reach with company. But if you team up, you'll walk side by side (in love!) through the whole thing.
You begin in the left side of the screen, and the right side (which represents your future) is a giant amount of blurred pixels. As you walk by, you can search for treasures in complicated mazes, increasing your score. But you won't live to see all the scenery, and just walk around freely with your love. As you get near the end, you're already on the right side of the screen, not much future to look up to, and the left side of the screen is now the blurry part... your past.
And you begin to think if your score is really that important.

You get the idea of the game, but you really have to play it to feel what it has to tell you. I was shocked when I felt that the "life algorithm" could be recriated in 5 minutes alone, and altough impressed, I'm now afraid of playing this game.

Download it here, and don't forget to read the author's notes.