Flash platform games are hardly a new genre, but the interesting shift here is from an indefinite amount of time that the player ends by making a mistake, mistiming a jump, or otherwise failing to complete the games’ objectives, into an incredibly short lifespan, making thirty seconds of survival feel like a massive accomplishment and not the glaring failure it would be in another WASD platformer.

Developer Mike Gnade says that he was struck by March’s challenge asking developers what they could bring to the player in just ten seconds, which immediately brought to mind speed rounds for platform games. Gnade claims he twisted “EGP’s challenge of creating something interesting in 10 seconds, and instead said to the player, here’s 10 seconds, see what you can do with it.  There’s a finite time and a finite number of power-ups so it’s inevitable that everyone explodes into a bloody mess – the question is how the player can make the most of it. “

Right now, the highest scoring players have managed to turn their allotted ten seconds of life into twenty minutes or more of playing time. (The Grad Games blog warns that some of the portal sites are reporting occasional issues with the high score list, but I didn’t encounter any problems.)  You can check out this free flash game now on Graduate Games and also on various Flash game portals.