OSLO, Norway — A recently released RPG video game is garnering rave reviews for omitting what most games in the genre include as a standard feature: a running counter of the exact number of hours and minutes you’ve sunk into it.
“What an innovative feature that is exactly the shot in the arm this genre needs,” said George Ripley’s gushing review of the recently released The Eleven Bridges: Book One: The Ides of Clubkoor. “While the battle, story, characters, and graphics are nothing to write home about, what The Elven Bridges does so well is let you stay immersed in the forgettable story as opposed to constantly reflecting on all of the productive things you could have done with upwards of 100 hours of your time.”
Gamers all over are discovering the game and fawning over the lack of a displayed time spent in the campaign.
“The Elven Bridges is game of the year, hands down,” said a popular tweet that was later turned into a full article on a gaming news website. “I can’t really get into the story, and the music is grating, and most of the time I’m really not sure where the hell I’m supposed to go next, but that’s fine. I’ll take my time figuring it out because I don’t have to have a specific digit stamped into my brain distracting me at all times. It feels good, man.”
The game’s developers said that by omitting this feature, they wanted you to lose track of the amount of time you lose track of.
“How much time have we spent collectively staring at our logged hours in a game in horror?” asked Mads Tubbock, lead director of The Elven Bridges. “We wanted to do away with that. Games are an escape from reality, and we feel that escape is dampened a little bit when you are constantly focused on how long you’ve been escaping, you know?”
As of press time, Tubbock revealed that no matter how long it took you to beat The Elven Bridges: Book One: The Ides of Clubkoor, the game will kindly display a finish time of 13 hours and 26 minutes when you beat it.
