lose/lose from zach gage on Vimeo.

Are you bored with your Wii, Xbox 360 or your PS3, and you want your video games to up the ante a bit? Why not try Zach Gage’s Lose/Lose?

You see, Lose/Lose is a game that plays like a traditional space shooter, but with a twist.

Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted.

Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land?

Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?

I’m seriously scared to run the game. But if any of you are willing to actually tempt fate and give it a try, let me know how it goes down!