A rich experience focused on the inevitable. You follow your main character's journey on the acceptance of his deletion by traveling and consulting with the inhabitants of other locales moments before their Garbage Collection. You have two primary options when speaking with the villagers, lightning or prayers. Lightning will help you escape the current level, or access secret areas that will aid you achieve your closure. Prayers will create a shelter based in your own town, which will protect the player from the deletion storm - literally lightning that deletes objects. Your ultimate goal is to survive long enough so the main character accepts his fate. The attitude at the time of their deletion depends on which villages you have been to, how many, and any "secret" areas you have been to which includes objects from your past and present.

The combat is fairly varied, but not overly complex. It does require skill, and this is certainly not a game you can skate by on without thinking what you are doing. To receive lightning or prayers from certain people, you might need to remember a fact about the town said by another villager. The combat can vary from side-scrolling challenges, to zelda-esque dungeon crawling, to arena "kill-house" style challenges. Depending how well you do can give you bonus lightning or keys which open doors in the villages, which allow you to speak to more villagers. I would advise against those who think the combat itself is the only reason to get the game- you will be dissapointed.

In addition to the combat and memorization, the skill of time-management is needed as well. Each village only has a certain amount of time before it's expiration. You have to prioritize what you need done. This is indicated by a countdown timer in the upper-right, once it hits zero there is a "stage" of degradation (Which varies how many there are by village). You will then enter a random combat scenario. Upon completion, you will return to the village which will have become slightly more hostile. Deletion monsters will roam the village which will delay you in your quest for shelter and closure.

It's an emotional ride that is open to your own interpretation. It does a grim subject matter well and was emotionally captivating enough to tug me along. And for that I am thankful.

Edit: Just would like to clarify on something some reviewers seem to have missed (Even though it's in the instructions). This game does have an auto-save feature each time you load a new area.

Wow, where do I start with this one?! Ok, Continue? is definitely an acquired taste. It begins with a beautifully drawn-out introduction on the death of a videogame character. Yet, he doesn't want to die. He escapes deletion for a while, and it's your job to keep him alive. While that sounds like an interesting premise for a game, Continue? doesn't stop there. Oh no. You quickly realise that the developer is trying to tell you something, and it soon turns into a reflection on life, on death, on childhood, love, freedom, knowledge and the inevitable. Each scenario that you play through is meant to be a prayer, not necessarily in an overtly religious sense (in fact, the game never comes across as preachy) but more in a sense of inner prayer, inner discovery for who you are, and what the important things in life are. It's not surprising that the developer made this game following a near-death experience. It does make you wonder whether there are better things to be doing with your life than playing a game, but that's beside the point!

Yes, there is a game here, but it's a long, drawn-out game full of interludes and reflection. Let me warn you, if you're not the kind of person who can sit through 5 minute long dreamy interludes, this game is probably not for you. Even the introduction, beautiful though it is, is completely unskippable each and every time you begin a new "life". When you eventually reach the gameplay, you're in a for a shock: it's hectic! You need to dash around looking for characters to speak to. Each will give you a clue, or a cryptic message, or open a door to a building. Getting information and opening doors is essential, because it's here that you can choose to either destroy sections of barriers that impede your exit from the level, or construct more buildings in your sanctuary town (more on that shortly). There's a strict time limit here, and you're also being chased around by chompers (servants of the garbage collector trying to delete you) that will drag you away to mini games if they touch you. Mini games happen every 45 to 60 seconds, and are either 2d riffs on simple arcade games, or 3d exploration / combat games. None last long, yet if you fail you will suffer the consequences! Each failure usually leads to the destruction of buildings in your sanctuary, and this is fatal if you aren't careful. Every two levels you will be taken to your sanctuary to survive a garbage collection "storm". Several buildings will be destroyed, and you need buildings to shelter from the storm. Run out of buildings, and you get deleted. This is how you die in the game, for real.

This gets really frustrating when you're having a run of bad luck. Finding characters, talking to them and making "prayers" to build your sanctuary or "lightning" to destroy exit barriers is very random; sometimes you might run around like a headless chicken for 20 seconds without finding anyone to speak to (and when the time limit for each deletion attempt is 45 seconds, that's a long time!), sometimes the lightning hits the same piece of ground over, and over, and you "waste" valuable time trying to escape the level, sometimes the price you pay for making a mini-game error is the deletion of 80% of your sanctuary buildings (other times you get off lightly). It feels unfair at times, yet when it's going your way it feels wonderful. It's as though the developer is telling you that life sometimes sucks!

Yet despite all this, I love the game. I really shouldn't, it does all these things that annoy me, and yet it's... it's just compelling, somehow magical, relaxing even if you're in the right frame of mind for it. If you're not, expect to rage quit! (it's CTRL+Q btw). I wouldn't blame you.

Before we continue we must ask ourselves: what is an experience? Not what is a game, because that is almost too broad to bother trying to put into words. But what is an experience? What is something you enjoy experiencing?

I cannot define this for all of you. An experience changes for each person- it is a variable that makes each person who they are.

Continue?9876543210 (wow that was fun to type out on the keyboard, I slid my finger down the number keys like some sort of badass) is definitely an experience. Whether it is a good one or a bad one is up to you. I personally felt like it made me think a lot about my life and what I take out of it, but I personally do not feel that much of the game other than the thought it provokes lives up to the price I paid for it, even at this discounted price of 8 dollars I paid for it. I personally think thinking should be free. What should be paid for is how the developer makes you think- either through visuals or audio or even story and gameplay.

The gameplay in this game is very basic. You run around and talk to people who usually just jabber on about strange things, but sometimes they open doors for you, and sometimes they sell you things. You are able to choose "lightning" or "prayer" when you enter these doors, and what these mean are up to the player to interpet, but what they do is either randomly spawn lightning to clear the path ahead or spawn a house in a town that is crucial to survive the later stages of the game. After 45 seconds to a minute though, garbage collection or something similar runs and takes you down to play a combat based minigame. After too many of these though, your game ends- but progressing to the next area resets this. So you are in a battle against time to progress to each area.

This gameplay sounds fine, but it is very repetitive. I was about to quit and take a break after the third one of these, but then I realized that there is no save feature in the game- the point is to play the game in one sitting it seems. And so I druged on (and how fitting to relate to the plot of the game), hoping the game wouldn't be TOO much of this. While the gameplay is unique and quirky, after the 3rd or 4th time through, it just gets old.

The music and the graphics are fitting to the theme of the game, but leave much to be desired. I found the graphics and music just plain boring to look at and listen to, and while there are some flashy scenes and very well done graphical choices during cutscenes, the levels look somewhat all the same in exception to a few that look amazing (the level where you're chasing down your reflections in the sea comes to mind) and in the end I just grew tired of it all very quickly.

It's very ironic that a game where you have to find peace with yourself grows harder and harder to get through. I found myself getting very bored with this game very quickly. But it's not about the game right? It's about the experience!

Well that my friends, I do not think is worth my 8 dollars. While it made me begin to think, I feel the game ITSELF did not make me think but rather the themes of it did. I apologize if that may be a mouthful, but it is hard to describe a game like this into words. In simpler terms, I feel like I could have just poked around the website of continue9876543210.com and gotten the same feelings I did instead of playing the game. And for that, I do not give it my personal reccomendation.

But experiences change for everyone. Who knows? Maybe you will enjoy it more than I did.

Despite the big thumbs up, I wouldn't recommend the game at its full price. It's good but you can get a lot more with $10 on Steam.

As for the content itself, its atmosphere sort of reminds me of a 3D Sword & Sworcery. However, I found Sword & Sworcery to be little more than a collection of pixel art and mysterious but ultimately meaningless dialogue whereas I found Continue to have genuine meaning that you can connect to your own life. The gameplay is not the focus in either game, but it is at least entertaining in Continue. Where it really excels is in its metaphorical meaning,

It is more art than game, designed to make you think as you race against time to build up what resistance you can to a fate you ultimately cannot escape. There is little replayability; you will discover most of what the game has to offer in a few short playthroughs. But I wouldn't call that a fault considering the goal of the game is to explore a theme, not to provide hours of entertainment. If that doesn't appeal to you, then avoid the game; otherwise, it's something to look into.

I'm a sucker for the TRON-like digital afterlife concept. So I went into C?9-0 eagerly expecting a deep, affecting experience. And for the first five or ten minutes, it seemed like it just might deliver on that...

Sadly, it very quickly descends into a qurky, poorly designed pile of...bits. Instead of feeling like a solid, well-thought out game, it feels more like an overly ambitious Digipen student project. The biggest problem is, you're thrust into a bizarre, abstract world without any sort of guidance.

"DEAREST FRIEND, YOU WILL BE CONFUSED AT FIRST, BUT BE BRAVE, IN TIME YOU WILL UNDERSTAND.", the game assures in a large, ubiquitous, fatiguing-to-read typeface. Part of me wonders if this line was a lampshade put in at the 11th hour of development to assuage confused newcomers.

I've spent more time than I'd care asking myself "what the hell is going on?!". Given the concept, this MAY be a conscious choice by the developer, since you're no longer in a 'game' and you're figuring it out as you go along just like the main character, Maggie. But as a player here in meatspace, I still need some sort of graceful introduction to the concepts.

Like, what the hell is 'Foo'? Apparently it's money. It says 0/5 RAM on the status bar. What does that mean? Oh, now I'm suddenly sucked into a Zelda-like overhead persective and attacking chattering teeth? Whoa, now I'm in a platform section where I have unexpectedly acquired a jump key, slaying more chattering teeth. Aaaand now I'm back to the Indian trailer park, talking to Juggalos.

Seriously.

To be fair, there IS a clumsy, minimal in-game manual to ham-fistedly explain some of this stuff, if you deicde to "spoil the mystery". And the more you bang your head against the wall, things begin to slowly connect together.

Unfortunately once you begin to weave together a vague notion of what's going on, you begin to realize that the core gameplay is not nearly as complex or interesting as you'd hoped. As an outsider, this has been an incredibly frustrating, confusing experience. Abstract concepts are great, but they need a clean and well-thought out game design to prop it up, more than most.

It's clear from other reviews that some players got a lot more out of this game, and I'm sure if I magically "got it" from the outset like they apparently did, I'd probably like it more, too. But as it currently stands, I'm confused as hell, and -- the bigger tragedy -- I feel no overwhelming desire to invest more time into understanding it further. In some ways, that's a worse failure than my benchmark for bitter mediocrity, "Thirty Flights of Loving". At least I was compelled to finish THAT, such as it was. But also, like that game, reviewers attributed to it a great weight of intellectual complexity that, frankly, I had a hard time giving it credit for.

Save your rupees, gang, and simply enjoy the lovely developer-provided screenshots. Imagine a great game built around those images and know that the game you have imagined probably DOES exist somwhere, out there, in-between the bytes of your computer's RAM.

Somewhere, in the depths of a gamer’s RAM, you are a dead video game character who must come to terms with your imminent deletion. You know that you cannot escape deletion, only that you may delay it. Continue?987654321 aims to be an “experience” more than it does a traditional game, drawing an obvious metaphor and resting on the hope that we can identify with or be moved by it. For most, it will not be enough to justify the purchase but, if you’re still interested by the time you finish reading, it may be for you.

Your quest in Continue is to survive long enough to make peace by staying one step ahead of the garbage collection program, which will clear you from the RAM, bringing your existence, and your game, to an end. To accomplish this, you must travel to six villages in each playthrough—chosen at random from a pool of eleven—spawning shelters back in a main hub. After every two villages, you will be forced to ride out an intense lightning storm in this hub and, if you do not have enough shelters in place to survive the destruction, you will be deleted and it’s game over.

Each village you travel to is comprised of citizens, locked houses and multiple blocked exits. By speaking with villagers outside, you can learn important keywords and secrets, receive items and stat bonuses or pay to unlock houses. Within houses are shrines or more citizens, which grant you either lightning (partially clears exit paths) or prayer (spawns shelter back in the main hub) for returning the proper item or answering questions correctly. In rare instances, villagers may sell you entrance into trapped houses that will destroy shelters you have built, but other villagers will also warn you about them.

Time in each village is valuable as you only have two to three minutes to spawn as many shelters as possible, while also clearing an exit to escape. The difficulty is unforgiving and leaves little room for error. The game intends to give you no feeling of respite at any time. At regular intervals there will be a glitch, forcing you to play a brief minigame that opens up additional houses in the village based upon your success. Minigames usually involve combat where it’s also possible to die, in which case you can only revive by having a particular item, enough money, or by sacrificing some of your shelters.

For a game that tries to connect with the player on an emotional level, the dialogue is too often cheesy and nonsensical; the only thing the game managed to make me feel was nervous and hurried. Continue is a good example of a game where it's possible to get just as much out of it by watching someone else play. I can only recommend it to those looking to experience something truly unlike other games they have played, for better or worse, and who can accept that experience might not actually be fun.

Continue?9876543210 is a surrealistic adventure game that is somewhat stylized like an old RPG game. Or something like that. Continue is a very strange game; The basic idea is that you play as a video game character who is at the end of his life. The classic, 'Continue?' screen of arcade games of old has passed, and no quarters were inserted. And so, you have 'died', and enter into a realm where all data from a previous game goes to be erased, wiped clean for the world to start anew again for the new player, and New Game option. In this desolate space, data is assimilated into bytes and data, and you having not made your peace yet struggle to survive in a climate made to delete you.

In the game, you start on a level that is representative of some gameplay trope, IE town, field, ruins, etc. There are a variety of NPCs and locked doors. You can talk to the people, who will either try to sell you something, give you a hint of some sort in the level you're currently in, say something about the story of the game, or say some rather useless blabber. NPCs phase in and out of existence, however. There's also monsters that spawn on the level, and wander around. Touching them triggers a battle scene, that transitions to a different scene like an RPG game. However, the battles aren't turn-based, but real-time, and work more similarly to a Zelda game. However, what they exactly are changes per encounter. Some are top-down, some are side-scrolling, some make you defend something, or you just have to fight all-out. Winning battles or doing things around the level usually get you a key, which you can use to unlock one of the various locked structures around the level. Inside the structure you'll either find a shop, something to push the story, some sort of side-quest, or a person who will either build structures or cast lightning.

Now building structures and casting lightning is important. The game has a sort of time limit, both in levels and the overall game. The levels you go to are randomized, and each has differences to each other. However, you have a certain number of 'rounds' that will pass before the whole level is eliminated. If you're in a level when it's eliminated, it's game over and you get a bad ending. There is a time period you have to do stuff in the level, and then the round ends and you face some kind of challenge. This can be like a tricky level, a boss fight, some kind of puzzle, etc. They're random. If you win, you get a big benefit to your cause of survival, but if you lose you miss your chance for some aid. Aid for what? To exit the level, you need to get people you encounter to cast lightning, as casting lightning will destroy some of the blocks randomly blocking one of the several exits out of a level. However, you also need to build structures. After every two levels or so, you'll be in a sort of 'storm' you need to survive, or else its game-over. In the storms, you're in a town that is formed of the buildings you have made people build in the normal stages for you. A storm hits, and the buildings are stricken by lightning. You have to hide in a building and wait for the storm to pass, though if your building is hit and destroyed you have a certain time limit to quickly scamper around the town to another building. If there are no other buildings or you run out of time, it's game-over.

You will always be given a choice of either Lightning or Building Structures. Lightning will clear a path to the next level after a few lightning strikes, while building structures will create buildings to hide in during these 'storm' sections.

Basically the game is all about time management and succeeding in the various challenges that both the monsters, NPCs, and Round End's bring, for doing these allows you to gain chances at either Lightning or Structure Building, to make it past the individual level in time and to build structures for the storms that happen every two levels or so. You'll either like the game or not, it's a bit complicated to understand at first, and won't be fun for everyone.

Also there are side-quests you can do that effect your story. The game has multiple endings, possible level paths, and more... What you do in levels, what level path you take, and the like effects the ending you work towards. The game is kind of made to be played multiple times, as its not very long and you won't go to many of the levels or see the whole game in a single playthrough.

And the game gets weird. The story is told in a very indirect way, and some of the events that can happen are just absolutely bizarre. Honestly the story feels most similar to something that David Lynch might of concocted up if he were to make a video game about video games. Depending on who you are, that might either be a good or bad thing.

The game's oddness is supplemented perfectly by its audio department. The game has a haunting soundtrack, interesting but odd sound design, but it all fits the weird atmosphere of the game perfectly.

And there isn't really much to say. The game is deceptively complicated, but actually rather simple when you get down to it. It strikes me as a huge love it/hate it type of game, and something that'll divide people's opinions on whenever it's good or not.

My stance is that it's interesting. The game itself is okay, but the atmosphere and some of the surreal elements I enjoyed. Of course, if you're less fond of such things, there will probably be less to enjoy in the game for yourself. Basically said, while there is a game here, the game is more about the experience. And depending on who you are, that experience will either be worth taking, or it won't be.

Continue may be worth it if you like experience-based games with a surreal and strange edge that are open to interpretation. If you don't like that, you probably won't like the game. Like the game itself, it all seems so complicated but it's so simple, really.

For starters i must state i like Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP so trying out this game was something i looked forward to despite negative reviews.

These two games share a lot in their way of telling the narrative - or not telling. It is much to the player to figure out things yourself. Just fine with that - there are not that many games on Steam that are 'artsy' like this and are yet able to provide a experience without becoming some kind of weird ego trip for the dev.

Unfortunately Continue?9876543210 goes for a more action oriented road despite having a somewhat more undrestandable universe where events take place (inside a computer). This is this game downfall since after the early interest goes away all that is left is a frantic action game where you try to mass enough shelters to survive data purge and enough lighting strikes to open a exit path. You also better learn the ropes with the action scenes quick since you cannot survive long if you need to start paying foo (money) or car parts (continues) to go on.

I found the lore interesting. No gods to pray to, just fading memories and void in the computer ram when the purge comes to eliminate the survivors. Too bad this marvelous setting gets lost under the frantic action.

This game has got all the components for a cult classic. unfortunately it will not be so. Designed differently 'my lightning, my prayer' could be almost as well known saying as 'the cake is a lie'.

edit: last line was lost. To conclude: i still recommend the game since this is a unique experience and despite the miss on the action design this game makes you think. For that i like it and i recommend you try it. It is quite reasonably priced in the store also.

This is a tough game to describe in a review, it's not really like anything I have played before; But in a good way. This is the type of game you have to experience for yourself to truly understand it and even then it takes some time. At first I was lost, the game just kind of throws you into the world and asks you to figure it out on your own. It took me a good 30-45 mins of playing to start to understand that a lot of the things shouldn't be taken quite at face value and most things seem to have a deeper meaning than at first glance.

It's not an easy game, but it's not a hard game. It's a game that require's player mastery through experience. You won't "complete" this game on your first go at it, and likely not your second or third either. The subject matter keeps you interested and often times will make you think. It's really a journey for the player character to make peace with the fact that their death is inevitable.

This certainly isn't a game for everybody, but I say if the game's premise intrigues you; then give it a go!

Emogame and Emogame 2 were staples of my adolescent experience. They turned me on to a slew of music that I wouldn't have appreciated otherwise and managed to be both hilarious and thoughtful throughout. When I saw that the creator of those flash games, Jason Oda, had developed this odd-looking title, I was intrigued. So, I'll lay out the negatives first: unskippable intro (that you will have to sit through many many times), boring and awkward combat, unintuitive gameplay mechanics. With that in mind, the game is a remarkably beautiful meditation on mortality explored by proxy through slain video game characters facing deletion and finally oblivion. If you go into this expecting a hack and slash dungeon crawl, you will be sorely disappointed. This is more of an interactive poem than a game, and it excels in that respect.