Simple Times

Intro

"Simple Times" is an educational game/endless runner developed by Irog for The Simple Times Event. An event that gave developers a lot of leeway when it came to creating a game that would fit the theme of childhood nostalgia. A theme that this game hits by combing a style of gameplay that was pretty common to flash games back in the day with multiplication knowledge you would have learned when you were a little sprog that terrorized the schoolyard. Albeit the school I went to when I was learning the multiplication table your being tested on in this game is now a parking lot for the local hospital.

Story

As far as I can tell there is no story to this game. I suppose you could make one up about being a math bandit crunching numbers in order to calculate the perfect approach for robbing a bank or something.


Blue Math Bandit - SleeplessDoc (X/Twitter)

And while it is true that most endless runners back in the day didn't have much going for them in terms of story. I would expect an educational game to have one in order to give kids something to do beyond solving math problems. After all, crunching numbers might be fun for some, but for others it quickly turns into a chore if there isn't something pushing you to crunch the numbers.

Gameplay

In this game you try to endlessly advance by solving multiplication problems. You do this by picking the lane that gives the correct answer to the question your being asked.



A task that is pretty easy if you've memorized a multiplication table that starts at 0 x 0 and goes up to 10 x 10. At least I never saw any questions that involved numbers higher than 10 on my two runs of the game. Unfortunately the easy nature of this game means it becomes boring pretty fast as well since it doesn't meaningfully challenge the player. At least if the player is like me.

Graphics and Sound

On the plus side the game is bright and colorful, but considering the game appears to be limited to a maximum size of three lanes. Your most likely going to see every graphic this game has to offer within the first two minutes of play. And you'll experience all three of the game's music tracks within that timespan as well. You have the title screen song, the song that plays while your endless running, and the theme that plays when you finally make a mistake or give up and reach a dead end.

Conclusion

I'm not entirely sure how to rate this game. On one hand it does function as intended. On the other hand I find this game to be a boring chore. So much so that I basically gave up on my Let's Play for this game at the three minute mark because I didn't want to subject myself to anymore of this game. And as previously mentioned I don't think it's rewarding enough to appeal to kids even if it's meant to help young students practice/memorize a multiplication table. In a way this game reminds me of "Pryzm: Chapter One - The Dark Unicorn" in that I'm not sure who the intended audience is for this game.