Novelty can get you pretty far in the indie game world. Unusual settings and peculiar mechanics can do a lot to get casual Steam store shoppers to check you out and maybe drop a couple bucks on your quirky little experiment. Whether or not they actually enjoy the final product depends on all those little details that add up to make intelligent game design, and that is a much more difficult thing to achieve. 60 Seconds! makes a decent effort at it, coming up a little short but not so much as to sink it.
The game takes place in suburban America during the height of the Cold War. You control Ted, an average everyman schlub with a wife, two kids, single-floor home, and fallout shelter. This last bit is important, as the game starts off with the bomb sirens blaring and Ted running around the house, trying to grab all the equipment, supplies, and loved ones he can before sixty seconds pass and the bombs start dropping. After this initial flurry of intense hoarder action, the game enters the second mode, a resource management sim where you must decide how to dole out food, water, and equipment to keep your family alive long enough for the fallout to clear and the military to arrive and save you. Every day, random events will occur, prompting you to make painful choices which drastically affect your odds of survival (Should we try to hunt down the mutant spider in the air ducts? Is it right to raid the old folks' home next door for snacks? Does little Timmy really deserve medication for his cholera?). On top of that, you are given the ability to send your family members out of the vault and into the glowing wastes to see what they can scrounge up. If you can make those tough choices, scavenge like a pro, and keep your loved ones from getting too mangled and irradiated, you just might last until the rescue crew arrives!
The game is not without its charms. The opening bit where you need to grab gear gets a little tedious, but there have been runs where I thought I was in good shape only to realize I forgot medicine, or the radio, or little Timmy; these d'oh moments actually made for some of the more entertaining challenge mode attempts at the game. The writing is... so-so, but the concept is unique enough to make me overlook that, and the random events keep the game fresh for quite a few replays. And while the presentation is pretty low-budget, it still shows enough attention to detail and visual humor to make me overlook the lack of polish.
60 Seconds! is definitely not going to be everyone's cuppa tea - roguelikes will always be a niche market, and suburban wait-in-a-concrete-bunker-for-a-few-months simulators all the more so. Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy it, and I imagine there've got to be other weirdos like me out there. If you appreciate the weirder end of the survival simulator spectrum, and you can keep your expectations managed, 60 Seconds! might just be worth your money.
