n+ is a stellar game! The gameplay is abstracted down to the purest action possible, utilizing only a few types of enemies and a handful of level-tiles it nevertheless manages to provide several hundred levels of intense platforming fun. Intense being the keyword. On certain levels in particular it became painfully obvious that I died every time I lost focus. Even the act of thinking about whether or not I was losing focus would make me die. It was like the more I played the more I became aware of that process, and how poor control I have over the things that goes through my mind.
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Basically all the game asks of you is to perform a series of precise jumps. I’ve included a screenshot of one such level, your goal is simply to execute a series of perfect jumps to traverse the middle. But I kept dying after half a minute, about as long as I could apparently concentrate. It was like I could literally feel my focus slipping, and I’d realize I wasn’t focused because I was suddenly thinking that I wasn’t focused!, and realizing that invariably meant my death a few seconds later. I knew the lack of focus would make me mess up, and in the process of blocking out all those thoughts I would invariably mis-jump and hit a mine. A hilariously sad recursive way of dying…
Anything and everything made me lose focus though. Random songs popped into my head, a car starting outside distracted me, at one point I suddenly got to thinking about writing this post and of course that also made me die.
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Weird brain I’ve got, very finicky. There’d be no limits to the things I could accomplish if I could stay focused for more than 30 seconds, but maybe n+ can help me…