wasted hours (that you make new)
A downloadable game
wasted hours (that you make new) is a game about visiting your hometown and discovering what's changed (or hasn't) and how you've changed (or haven't).
Grab your keys, some friends, a sheet of paper, and some sticky notes as you take a trip home and drive by all the places that shaped your teenage years. Mark each spot (old or new) on a map of the suburbs you left behind, and shed a tear for that taco shack that closed down between now and then. Word is that someone from your graduating class is having a party somewhere, but maybe you just want to sit on the hood of your dad's old car and stare up at the stars. The call is yours to make, and the hours are yours to waste.
This game was made as part of Record Collection 2k20 and is inspired by the entirety of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, but takes its title and central mechanic from the 11th track, Wasted Hours.
This is the first game that I've ever written, and I had a blast doing it. Thanks to Riley Hopkins for putting the jam together, and to Adam Vass and the Brain Trust for feedback and encouragement during the writing process.
Thumbnail Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels
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Wasted Hours is a powerful and quiet rpg about that particular feeling of returning to your hometown in the first few years after high school.
It's 10 pages, with a very solid and easy to read layout, but no illustrations.
Right off the bat, it leads with an interesting note on safety and context, making it clear that you shouldn't play this game if it's dangerous to return to your home town. Atypical mechanics like visiting towns in real life can be tricky to write guardrails for, but Wasted Hours walks a really good line between providing context and providing rules.
Writing-wise, Wasted Hours has a really strong, casual voice. Everything is communicated directly, and nothing feels too technical or dry.
Mechanically, Wasted Hours is a bit weird. It wants you to play the game in a group, driving around your town, but it also does things like rolling dice to see if the places you want to visit are there any more. I couldn't quite pin down whether the intent was to develop a fictional hometown and visit that, or to sort of overlay a fiction on top of your real town as you drive around---and if a dice roll redacts the barber shop, you have to pretend the barber shop isn't there any more.
The game closes on a much more concrete note, with you writing a letter to yourself about what's changed and how you feel about it, and this does a lot to re-anchor the game emotionally. It's not quite tragic, but moving on always means leaving something behind.
Overall, I'd absolutely recommend this game to anyone who's feeling nostalgic about their home town, or that likes quieter emotions, or that wants to check out some really cool game design. Wasted Hours is a really neat thing, and I'd recommend you pick it up.