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How do you keep people playing your game?  Well, you could give it a multiplayer mode.  Or you could add more content through expansions (a lucrative endeavor at times).  Or you could add achievements.  Achievement Unlocked satirizes the achievement phenomena of late with hilarious results.

Achievement Unlocked

In a broad sense, achievements represent a new way of keeping score in games.  In the past, games like Donkey Kong assigned a number to how good you were at playing.  Today’s games are often too complex to represent skill in a single number, but achievements have filled in the gap.

Achievements are perhaps incomplete as ways of comparing players.  Often, achievements represent how much time a player is willing to invest in a game rather than pure skill.  Still, with both the Xbox, Steam, and the PS3 all using them its hard to argue they aren’t relevant to game design.

All of which is lampooned well in Achievement Unlocked.  In this game, you earn achievements for things like exploring the menu, killing yourself in specific ways, and even just starting the game.

You can play Achievement Unlocked here and its new sequel here.  They are both quite fun, and as a bonus will get you thinking about how achievements are changing the way we play games.

Tags: achievement unlocked, achievement unlocked 2, achievements, game design, importance of high scores