One Hour, One Family

Introduction

I was born into a large family that lived in a busy camp. It would be my first long game in One Hour, One Life. My mother was kind and taught me that children should mind the gooseberry bushes.

I continued to mind them well into my adulthood. I remained the youngest of the family. Later, when I was alone and looking through the graveyard, I would discover that at one point I had had a little sister. My siblings seemed to know what they were doing; my uncle seemed to be the most advanced of all, but when I tried to stand by the kiln to see what he was doing, I was greeted with an unceremonious “MOVE.”

“ANY MORE GIRLS HERE?” my mother asked. She was the last remaining woman. Even with her graying hair and hunched back, she was still speeding back and forth across the camp, fetching water and dirt. My family of five or six slowed down its frantic activity and mourned. Despite all our hard work, our family would not be able to go on. We hoped another family would be able to find this place.

“WELL, MY TIME HERE IS DONE,” my mother said, and collapsed.

In a desperate whirl, I left my family to rush East in search of a woman who could join our farm and continue our line. Flat expanses of painted color changed from wash to wash, without a person in sight. I passed a single pile of bones.

Once I returned, I found only the uncle who had once been so rude to me, still running back and forth, his tasks inexplicable but his dedication complete. Wheels lined the ground. I saw none of my other family members. We regarded each other and our inevitable end.

“ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW,” he asked me.

“WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO SURVIVE”

My uncle contemplated. “GIRL,” he declared solemnly.

The 5 by 5 array of bones in our encampment took on a new nobility. “I WILL BURY YOUR BODY,” I assured him. He had begun to strip himself of his rabbit skins, piece by piece. I mournfully collected them and put them on.

“WHERE”

“IN THE GRAVEYARD”

He walked over. “GOODBYE,” he said, and turned into a pile of bones.

The encampment that had once been so busy was empty now.

***

One Hour, One Life is commonly described as a human-civilization simulator because of its crafting system that grows more complex as the player advances. It seems to fit the game well on the surface, but the label is really a poor descriptor of the game. In One Hour, One Life, the sounds are all made by mouth, and the art looks hand-drawn and cartoony. These qualities make the game seem as if it were made by a child on paper, fleshed out with imagination. Players play a single character at a time and try to survive and fend off hunger.

Don’t Starve is a mechanically similar game whose mood is very different. It is also two-dimensional with a hand-drawn quality, and also uses left-click and right-click as its main methods of interacting with the world. Its focus, too, is on survival and advancement. But when I play Don’t Starve, the most interesting moments are creating a “Science Machine” for the first time, when the edge of my screen lights up and new Science crafting options are available; desperately fighting off hounds by torchlight; managing the madness that creeps up on my character. The game is fast-paced and exciting, and the desperately needed crafting advancements elicit joy and relief when unlocked.

Don’t Starve’s gameplay strives on advancement, which involves increasing crafting abilities and building a stronger base to survive against the odds. By comparison, One Hour, One Life’s crafting and advancement mechanics are much weaker.

The most memorable, distinctive, and evocative moments of One Hour, One Life lie not in advancement through its tech trees, but rather in its moments of family connection. Players become the most talkative at birth and death. The game’s one-hour-one-life structure asks players not to create for themselves, but to create for the people who might be here after—my family’s desire was for other players to be able to prosper from our settlement, whether our family or not. The emphasis on family pushes players to trust each other in the game, and to place their hope in each other for survival. My uncle reached out to me over his death bed, and I learned to love him. A gross array of bones became our family’s burial grounds. One Hour, One Life is not a human-civilization simulator but a family life simulator.

Note: for my ideas on how family structures work, see "Neither Victim nor Rebel" by Menon. A fascinating subject that's too much to get into in a blog post!