Sisyphos

The best part about this app is how absolutely not fun it is. In a modern world where many struggle with phone addiction, the unstoppable urge to open social media right before bedtime, or to indulge in a few swipes to fill any moment of free time really, it almost feels good to force yourself to open up this app instead. Call it a variety of sadism, but this app gives me the option to punish myself for my desire to indulge, and tasting the eternal torment of Sisyphos teaches me every day that there is another reality where the release of serotonin in the brain is not a cheap commodity, but rather something earned only through blood sweat and tears, as it should be. This is not a game, but rather it is the exact of opposite of every other app available on the market. There are even apps that market themselves as alternatives to social media, but require a subscription to interact with them for more than ten minutes a day. Sisyphos does not pretend to provide you with anything except a free, stoic alternative to stimulation on demand, and for that it has my respect.

Counter to a lot of reviews, I found this game fun initially. The fun game from having a goal. First, learn the rhythm. Then crest the mountain. Then make it back. Then build a streak. However at that point you basically have no reason to continue. Sure you could build your multiplier to infinity and top the leaderboards, but I’ve found that I’ve no desire to return to this game that I consider good. Maybe that’s the point and that’s fine. My gamer brain just craves more goals to climb towards. The irony is that it would be more fun if it wasn’t possible to get to the top

This game isn’t fun, and that’s okay. Not every game needs to make you feel powerful. This game is meant to make you feel the frustration and despair that the character “Sisyphus” would feel. It does that pretty well, at the beginning at least. You don’t know what to do, do you follow the tutorial. You quickly learn how to beat the game system after ten minutes filled with despair. You learn that any failure is your fault alone, which I feel takes away from the intended feeling of the game. My opinion is that personal failures are less frustrating than those by pure chance, and much less than those by the choices of others. I think that it would be much more frustrating if there was RNG in the game, a VERY small chance of randomly failing through no fault of your own.