《One Single Life》是一款iPhone独立开发者推出的游戏，从该游戏中我们可以看出其设计师Anthony O’Dempsey确实很擅长挖掘人们深藏内心的恐惧或紧张感等情绪。

他在2009年时就在自己的个人网站上提出了这一设想，“我从来不惧怕冒险类游戏中的危险性跳跃，原因是在我内心深处，我认为最可怕的是重新开始玩一个关卡，或者被迫返回原点。”

one single life

有许多游戏都具有在高楼大厦之间穿越、与外星人混战或者在致命危险之地疯狂飙车的任务特点，但这些游戏中的死亡却不过是一种减速或者短暂性的挫败。当《古墓丽影》中的Lara Croft误入一个充满尖刺的缺口时，玩家就需要返回游戏，再花几分钟时完成她未成功的动作。

今天的游戏比以往更具宽容性，几乎没有任何游戏会以原始手法来终结玩家的“生命”，玩家随时可以复生，例如在最近的《波斯王子》这款游戏中，无论你什么时候跌入万丈深渊，最后总会在附近的落脚点重生。

在今天的游戏中，你只需要通过重新玩最后5分钟的游戏，以挽回之前遇到的失败。但在过去的街机游戏时代，玩家总要自食失败苦果——游戏机会吞掉50枚硬币，如果不继续投币，你就无法重新开始。Dempsey针对这种现象发问，“假如玩家在游戏中只有一条命，结果会怎样？”

这正是《One Single Life》这款iOS游戏（游戏邦注：包括iPhone、iPod Touch和iPad版本）的独特之处。玩家在游戏中要扮演一个自由狂奔者，并在两橦大厦楼顶之间穿梭。玩家可以在仿真模式下玩游戏，但如果登上了楼顶，就要面临非生即亡的命运。

如果成功跳到另一个楼顶，玩家就会进入下一个环节，但如果失手了——比如过早起跳，你就会碰撞到高楼壁缘，太迟动身则会被大厦的边缘绊倒并因此丧命，游戏就会永远结束（游戏邦注：除非你删除并重新安装该游戏应用程序）。

Dempsey对这种设计的解释是，“就像世界杯大赛中的足球运动员走到罚球点时内心所受到的煎熬，我想让游戏玩家也在心里自问：‘我真的可以胜任这个重要的使命吗？’”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

iPhone Experiment One Single Life Toys With Gaming Mortality

In the free indie game One Single Life, failure is permanent.

In One Single Life, an experimental indie game for the iPhone, designer Anthony O’Dempsey tries to illustrate why most games fail to evoke genuine emotions like fear or anxiety.

He first figured it out in late 2009. Writing on his website, O’Dempsey explains: “The reason I was never truly afraid of that ‘perilous’ jump in an otherwise thrilling adventure game was that deep down, I knew the worst possible consequence was having to start the level over or be returned to the nearest checkpoint.”

Games might feature leaps between skyscrapers, firefights with aliens and cliff-top dirt-bike racing, but death is never more than a speed bump or a momentary setback. When Lara Croft bungles a jump and plummets into a bed of spikes, you’re sent back a few minutes to replay her last steps.

These days, games are more forgiving than ever: Hardly any games deal with the archaic notion of “lives” anymore, checkpoints are closer together than ever and a recent Prince of Persia game simply picked you back up and dropped you off at the nearest foothold whenever you accidentally tumbled off into the abyss below.

In today’s games, your penance for failure is replaying the last five minutes. In the days of arcades, the consequence was a little higher: The machine gobbled your 50 cents and wouldn’t let you continue unless you slotted in another coin. Dempsey wanted to go one step further. “What if there was a game with literally only one life?” he asks.

That’s the deal with One Single Life, out now for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad for free. You play a tie-wearing free runner who plans to leap between two rooftops. You can practice in a simulation until you get the timing right, but when you’re on the building it’s do-or-die time.

Make the jump and you’ll get to the next stage. But if you fluff the event — jump too early and you’ll slam into the adjacent skyscraper, jump too late and you’ll trip over the edge and plummet to your death — it’s game over, forever.

(Well, unless you delete and reinstall the app, but that’d be cheating, right?)

“Like the pro footballer walking to the penalty spot in the World Cup Final, agonizing over exactly the same question, I wanted to make a game which asks: ‘Do I have what it takes when it matters most?’” O’Dempsey explains.（source:wired）