September 12th: A Toy World2003

September 12th is a serious game with a political statement about the USA’s War on Terror which started after September 11th 2001.

In the game, the player is presented with a Middle Eastern market place in a top-down isometric view. Walking around the market and the surrounding buildings are innocent civilians – men, women, children, and dogs. There also several terrorist walking among them.

All the player can do is scroll the camera and fire missiles. Missiles will impact on the exact location of the targeting reticule, but with a small delay. Killing a terrorist will remove the terrorist from play. If another civilian encounters his or her body, the civilian will burst into an emotional display and become determined to go on a jihad and thus also become a terrorist. The more civilians you kill the more terrorists come into play.

Buildings also get destroyed when hit by the rather large blast radius of the player’s missiles. Civilians surrounding collapsing buildings also die. After a long period of waiting buildings will also slowly be reconstructed again. Terrorists will after a while cool down and become normal civilians again, but a small number of terrorists will always remain terrorists.