3 Minute Sunset

Play it here: https://complicatednonsense.com/sunset/

Process

I made the prototype of 3 minute sunset in two days at Castle Game Jam 2023. The idea was born when sitting with Friedemann and a bunch of other gamedevs at the shore by the lake, looking at the sky, and we thought "what a nice feeling, to just sit here and watch the sunset and think, maybe this could be a game".

Two days later:

Thoughts on the process

I thought that pressing a button to think is a very apt metaphor for the current state of the world. Having a short 3 minute session, that actually feels quite long compared to typical smartphone interactions nowadays, could also be a good thought-provoking message for the player.

The thoughts come and go slowly at first, but then they can come faster, and the game saves your thoughts and lists them at the end of the game, giving you the opportunity to think about what you thought about. From there you can think again, or share your thoughts. It's a fertile ground for puns, all this thinking stuff, methinks.

Thoughts on games and life

Games have been giving me a different kind of experience as I grew older. Now I'm 30, and for a while I have felt that most games I used to immerse myself in are a form of active entertaining, that sometimes make me a bit more tired than they're worth, and don't provide a good escape from the daily grind.

When we are bombarded with fast-paced media everywhere, it's easy to get tricked that life must be this way, and get stressed when we can't compete with the false image of what other people's lives might be like (because we only see each one's online snippets rather than the full story with all its natural boredom).

I learned the power of sitting and doing nothing for 5 minutes - I even wrote some songs about it - and due to some combination of loneliness, internet addiction and the daily work grind, even doing nothing for 5 minutes feels like a lot. And I noticed that other people feel this too, more than before, and are making various attempts to fix it by meditating or doing various hobbies. So here's my contribution to a slower, peaceful, more thoughtful world.