In the early 2000s, I played an ambitious Flash game called Emogame and its politically-themed sequel. I was impressed by the effort that had gone into these games. (Note: I seem to remember that there was content that some might find objectionable, though I don’t remember exactly what.)

When I stumbled upon the game Continue?9876543210, its description made me curious and I did a little research. It turns out that it’s by Jason Oda, creator of Emogame. That and what I’d seen of the game so far was enough for me to justify a sort of impulse-buy.

Continue is the story of a video game character who has died. The player has chosen not to continue the game, so the character wanders the system’s memory, awaiting eventual annihilation by the program’s cleanup process.

The official site describes Continue as “artsy” and “philosophical.” These can be polarizing terms, but I tend to like games that aim for this sort of thing, even if they can be tedious in some cases. (If you haven’t played an artsy, philosophical game before, I recommend Passage. It’s free and takes only five minutes.)

The game’s character must come to terms with (while attempting to temporarily delay) his or her impending oblivion. This, of course, invites the player (of this game, not the player who chose not to continue the other game) to consider his or her own life and mortality. Some of the ideas and situations in this game are apparently based on a personal experience of Oda’s.

The same day I found Continue, I also discovered another of the author’s games called Skrillex Quest. This is a free one that seems to have been created on commission for music group (kind of like The Quest for the Rest, I suppose), and it’s also worth a look.

A couple more links:

• 2012 article about Oda’s game development history
• Andrew Vestal’s review of Continue