Back when video games could only be squeezed into enormous arcade machines, a timer was built to ensure that everyone (with a pocket full of dimes) could get their chance to play. As games moved from public entertainment venues toliving rooms and bedrooms, some titles chose to retain the element of chronological limitation.
For some gamers, trying to beat the clock is a thrilling challenge. For others, the pressure is too much and can make some games with a timer unplayable. Whether it’s a ticking time bomb, the existential dread of the universe coming to an end, or something in between, time is perhaps the most universally recognizable foe in fiction or in real life.
Perhaps the most famous and quintessential example of an anxiety-inducing time limit in video games is the one found inMajora’s Mask. After being transformed into a snot-slinging, flower-floating tree person, Link must haplessly prevent a celestial object from crashing into the world in only three days. Defenseless and hopeless in the face of overwhelming odds, many skittish players tend to panic in the game’s opening act and switch their consoles off before the ugly-faced moon falls from the sky and burns up everything in sight.
Of course, those competent and brave enough to make it to Clock Town’s clock tower before the last moment were granted the abilityto reset the time limitat the cost of losing their progress and items. But even with this power, the sense of panicked urgency never goes away, as Link is forced to adhere to the laws of time while he delves into dungeons, banishes aliens, and heals the last regrets of the traumatized denizens of a doomed and godless world.
The miniature solar system inOuter Wildsoperates like clockwork. As a finely-tuned machine, everything returns to its origins in precisely 22 minutes: the planets, their satellites, and everything between are all swallowed by a supernova explosion originating from the system’s sun.
The player, tethered due to an incidental cosmic link to a statue built by a long-gone people, is free to explore and discover the root cause of the doomed cyclebetween each time loop. But that 22-minute window only allows for so much progress and exploration before the grand redo. Thankfully, the player always retains their knowledge, helping them progressively overcome the logic puzzles thatOuter Wildsthrows at them.
InLighting Returns, the world of Cocoon and Gran Pulse, as seen in Final Fantasy 13 and 13-2, has given way to Nova Chrysalia, which is already succumbing to the end of the world. Having time-warped to the apocalypse, Lightning is tasked with collecting all the stray souls from across the void-swallowed lands within a span of seven days.
Presumably, Lightning is sending them to a world that isn’t a living nightmare to live in, but with all thosebeautiful but terrifying environments inFinal Fantasy, it’s anyone’s guess. However, anyone left behind, including Lightning, will be lost to entropy. Thankfully, any side activities, such as chocobo petting and side-questing, add a little extra time before the cosmos is overrun by chaos energy.
Due to the original two entries beingdesigned as PC-exclusive RPGs, console gamers who may even be long-time fans of theFalloutseries may not be aware that the story of the original two games was predicated on a time limit. In the first game, the Lone Wanderer is ejected from their vault sanctuary and sent to find a replacement water chip, without which the vault would only last around 150 days.
The player can hold off the dehydration death of their vault by having water shipped over from a major city, and the game continues after the player finds a replacement chip. However, there is still a (hidden) 500-day limit on how long the Vault Dweller can dwell on the surface. In the sequel,Fallout 2, there is a 13-year limit on how much time the player can record on their save, but more for system-limitation reasons than narrative reasons. Besides, it is unlikely that any player will use up all those years on one save.
The open-ended nature ofDead Rising’s sandbox mall environment could potentially have made the whole experience slightly aimless. However, because ace reporter Frank West is only given 72 hours to get his scoop between mowing down hoards of the risen dead, a sense of urgency drives the player to achieve what they can within the time frame. Love it or hate it, the timer’s omissionfelt somewhat out of placein the fourth entry.
That includes doing all the wacky stuff that unlimited access to a zombie-infested mall entails (as well as saving survivors and figuring out what caused the outbreak to happen in the first place). The time limit gives the player’s story, whether serious or carnage-based, a greater sense of structure, and whether they find answers or not, infuses all their decisions with meaning and consequences.
Time moves rather strangely inThe Simsuniverse. Painting a masterpiece takes around five or so in-game hours, but walking from the garden to the attic can take upwards of three hours, depending on the size of the lot. Ever since theSims 2, sims have been aging in equally unsettling ways. With only four days in infancy, there doesn’t seem to be enough time to appreciate the good things and smell the roses. Settings can be changed and lifespans lengthened, but the longest these virtual people live is 960 days, as they do in theSims 3.
Besides the original game, sims inThe Simsare doomed to live short, albeit idyllic, lives, especially with the option of speeding up time. Given how many people insert themselves into their games, it seems grim that players can potentially watch themselves pop in and out of existence over the course of an afternoon. Just like in real life, with enough time, losing is guaranteed. Despite its bubbly branding,The Simscould be consideredone of the darkest video games ever, thanks to its unintentionalmemento mori.
