Immortality goes against just about every law of nature that we’ve come to understand, yet humans still dream to acheive it. Philosophers often scrutinize the value (or rather the detriment) of living forever, with many a layman in agreement that such an existance would grow boring.

Now there’s a video game that let’s you explore this idea, simply titled “Immortality“. The concept: Your character has two possible goals floating overhead, with a timer counting down until your death. Climbing to one goal will kill you instantly. Climbing to the other will disable the timer, granting you “immortality”. With no timer to threaten your life, there’s no longer anything to stop you. Inside an environment where there’s nothing to do but shuffle around blocks, the game illustrates how living forever would become very boring, very quickly. To which your only escape of this nightmare is to pursue the black square of Death.

I on the other hand, am a loyal advocate of immortality. I can see where I may get bored for long periods of time, but the universe is constantly changing. Witnessing human culture grow and evolve would be fascinating for at least a few millennia (I hope). It’s no different from when I’m bored in my mortal lifespan. People also like to argue that it would be so depressing having those you care about grow old and die all around you. Again, we deal with that already, losing friends and relatives to the grim reaper. All the while, however, accumulating new acquaintences to keep us company along our path.

The game is interesting, I’ll grant it that. Alas, its throught-provoking theme cannot hide the fact that it is a simple puzzle game, nor shake loose my ideology. The game is free and certainly worth a try.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 4:50 am and is filed under Games, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.