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Time Loop Game

The game that could last forever
  (+11, -2)(+11, -2)
(+11, -2)
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The game is played in 'real' time.

The overall objective of the game is to stop time from looping, but the first level might involve a really complicated set of events that allow you to eventually learn the combination to get out of a cell. However, by the time you have the combination, you can't escape because there is a guard or something, so you have to wait till time loops and you can wake up and leave immediately.

Some tasks will require you to die to complete them, others have things that will kill you if you make a mistake. When you die, you cannot play again until the next morning (or 12:01). Likewise, wherever you are at 11:59, you get sent back to bed at 12:00.

The game continues like this with you having to find information or the location of tools until the final level where you have everything you need to run around town like a man possessed, doing things in exactly the correct order to allow you to prevent the loop.

Inspired by the 'Sonic the Groundhog Day' idea and some of the linked titles.

marklar, Feb 09 2009

Time loop films and episodes http://web.ncf.ca/cz159/TLoops.html
Deja vu all over again [marklar, Feb 09 2009]

Sonic the Groundhog Day Sonic_20the_20Groundhog_20Day
[marklar, Feb 09 2009]

Agrajag http://www.mun.ca/b...n_Night_Stalker.jpg
(as i've always imagined him) [nineteenthly, Feb 09 2009]

Death Loop (game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathloop
Has everything except the real-time element [marklar, Jan 05 2024]

[link]






       [+] I think it is a good follow-on from Sonic the Groundhog day to have more tasks to complete, especially ones that you can only complete by dieing one time, then using that knowledge to start again. It would also test memory, as you would have to remember each step each time.   

       hmmm - is this the same as every other game i've ever seen (you die, you remember what you did wrong, you don't do it next time)
MadnessInMyMethod, Feb 09 2009
  

       The plot is more like sci-fi episodes in terms of the tasks that you have to complete, rather than falling in love.   

       It differs from other games in that there is a plausible reason for your resurrection unlike other games and you have to wait until tomorrow if you die.   

       The real-time aspect of it does have other features, like you have to play the game at a certain time of day to complete some tasks. There would need to be a choice of things to do at any point so that some things could be done at the weekend.   

       In fact, the more I think about it, the real-time thing is the biggest part of the game, not the time loop.
marklar, Feb 09 2009
  

       I like it [+]. I think it could fit quite well into the cosmology of certain religions and philosophies, for instance Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. You could also have an Agrajag version, based on the character in the Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy who gets killed accidentally by Arthur Dent in every life, so you get to be a bowl of petunias, a rabbit, a fly, a bouncer, a man with a weak heart at a cricket match and so forth, until eventually you become one of the things in the link i'm about to post, then build a cathedral of hate before dying.
nineteenthly, Feb 09 2009
  

       To a certain extent that is what some people do with saving the game. But I don't think people expressly make the game impossible without saving, so like it. Most computer programs even with random elements tend to impliment random behavior in the same way every time. Randomness in programs is simulated for the most part.
MercuryNotMars, Feb 09 2009
  

       Oh yes - Agrajag: the game. You win if you get killed by someone other than Arthur Dent. The bowl of petunias level would probably be one you couldn't win.
MadnessInMyMethod, Feb 09 2009
  

       I remember there being a time loop in the plot of the original Final Fantasy.
Spacecoyote, Feb 09 2009
  

       ... didn't I just look at this post a minute ago ?
FlyingToaster, Feb 09 2009
  

       Check out "Quarantine," a book by sci-fi author Greg Egan.   

       It's about what might happen if somebody learned how to control the collapse of the quantum waveform to produce favorable results.   

       If your protagonist(s) represented the various possible eigenstates, it could potentially be more scientifically plausible, and might introduce new gameplay possibilities (like being able to have doors "happen" to be unlocked on the next iteration [although it wouldn't really be an iteration of course, they're all actually happening simultaneously], or a guard "happen" to look away at the right moment - your creativity in realizing what you can change could be part of the puzzle)
Smurfsahoy, Feb 09 2009
  

       Hmm, sounds like something NASA should fund...
nineteenthly, Feb 09 2009
  

       There should be a transience about the universe, and if you were to eccentrically orbit a black hole you could feasibly get stuck in a time loop that send you back and forth through time assuming you go no further than the event horizon in which case you'd spiral back in time to the point in which you entered the point of no return and you'd eternally oscillate between the singularity and the event horizon only to escape as Hawking Radiation or as tachyons (phase space being the real position in the past while real space being the position in the present).
quantum_flux, Feb 10 2009
  

       That'd be OK for someone who was in the middle of being teleported as a beam of particles, but otherwise, wouldn't they already be spaghettified? I can't think of a convincing life form or other entity for which that would differ from death or destruction offhand. Then again, the Universe is probably full of stuff no-one has thought of yet. Then again, if the Universe itself turns out to be a black hole, that might be happening to us.
nineteenthly, Feb 10 2009
  

       “”There is the theory of the mobius, a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop, time becomes a loop, time becomes a loop, time becomes a loop …”   

       -Worf/Orbital
wagster, Feb 10 2009
  

       In that case, time would only have one side. What about all the events on the other side of time?
Thanks for the reference to a canine which is not only wobbly-bobbly but also wibbly and squibbly. That's a rare thing nowadays, don't you find? And to think, it's only ten quid too.
nineteenthly, Feb 11 2009
  
      
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