To What End

To What End is a game made for the Global Game Jam 2012 San Francisco with Ouroboros as a theme. It shows a scenery with five shapes of different colours that fit into each other. The player controls only one shape and the other four are autonomous non-player characters that follow the player character's position and jump along. There is no direct goal to the game; it can be completed in five minutes by just standing still without touching a single key, but a curious player will eventually move right to find out what is next. This leads to different scripted events that, according to the authors, question our constant pursuit of extrinsic rewards and society's "more!" mindset by casting doubt on traditional conventions in games. Regardless of the player's actions day eventually turns into night and then the game ends automatically.