December 16th. The unsung hero of the Gregorian calendar.

• 1653 – Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth.
• 1689 – The bill of rights is embodied in the English parliament.
• 1773 - The Boston Tea Party, ungrateful Americans waste a lot of tea, in defiance of their cultured masters and creators of civilisation.
• 2007 – Anonymous internet man BenW gives birth to a video game, to little fanfare.

Lamentable is the fate of the pauper. Languishing in obscurity, a fate pre-ordained and hand-picked from inception. As inseparable and integral to his being as the very genes which define him. It is through art we find a voice, and through our voice that we are heard. On December 16th, 2007, BenW requested an audience.

On this day, it is my pleasure to say: request accepted.

In Chain Reaction, you either are, or you control (according to your religious beliefs) a coloured square, occupying space on a tapestry of other coloured squares that endlessly scroll left. The squares that meet with the edge of the screen are detonated, and any squares touching them are also detonated. Hence the name. To complicate this task of “moving right”, occasionally a red square will scroll from the right. Needless to say, contact with the red squares, or contact with detonating squares, ceases your existence.

Ostensibly, you may say “I’ve walked right before. Passage is a bad game”. You’d be right, of course, but unlike Passage, this is art, not some child’s colouring book masquerading as a work of great profundity.

Our fate chases us, an unwelcome spectre haunting our every waking moment, our every sleeping dream. An invisible force pushing us onwards until we shamble from our realm of the living, into whichever nebulous afterlife you do or do not believe in. To fate, this is a mere playground activity, joyfully toying with our very existence, playing tag with all that we are, and moving inexorably towards the next victim.

A haunting melody backs your tango with the end, both the structured, internal ambience, and the unpredictable, external cacaphony, the sagas of life. Neither the most powerful man, nor the most pitiable wretch exert any sway over the omnipresent inevitability. Your time has been predetermined. Your fate carved in stone long before you existed, and shall exist long after you have departed. Not as a touching monument, but as a meaningless etching, a craggy edge amongst a sea of rough, igneous features.

For all your presence of self, your belief in your own free will, you are going to die. You know this. You know not when it is, but some great and mysterious force does. BenW has seen the face of death. He’s studied each remarkable feature of the iris, and lived to make a game about it.

Chain Reaction (Direct Link) by BenW, 8.52 MB