Unfair Flips is a game that is impossible to score or rank. It is the equivalent of a Turner Prize in gaming. A game so abstract or simplistic in its artistic statement, you aren’t quite sure if it’s art or not. As such, this review will explain the game itself and how it made me personally feel, but it doesn’t contain a true score (even if the website wrapper forces me to place one in).
Unfair Flips presents you with a single coin on a screen. Your goal is to flip the coin and get 10 heads in a row. That’s it. That’s the goal. You press space or click the flip button to flip the coin. The game tells you there is a 20% chance of you landing heads. That feels strange because there are two sides to a coin, so in theory it should be 50%, but the game isn’t fair… or is it?
Welcome to the Pavlovian experiment that solo developer Heather Flowers has put together. You’ll swear you’ll get a lucky run, but the sign still says 25% chance. Quickly, a couple of additional game mechanics are introduced. Each time you land heads, you earn $0.01. There are a couple of incremental unlocks to buy that increase the cash earned per head, the multiplier for getting heads in a row, and the percentage of chance you may flip a head. You can never reach 100% guarantee; the game doesn’t allow it. You’ll max out at around 60% and so here you’ll sit, flipping coins, hoping to get the winning streak.
When you flip 9 heads in a row, the camera pans in dramatically and the game picks one of a few endings for your next flip. It could be tails or heads. The coin could also land on its side (it did that to me twice in a row) or flip off the screen, never to return. Then the game ends and you start again from scratch. That’s it. No music, minimal effects, one screen, one click.
Unfair Flips is the most basic, minimalistic form of probability you can get in gaming. By showing you odds and occasionally interjecting with “this is your 1000th flip” in your results tally, the player perversely just keeps on going, hoping to win. I found myself clicking faster or slower, thinking I had more control over the probability than I did. The game just does what it wants based on the probability factor, but as a player, you wrestle with whether you should keep going, give up, try something else or just scream. It’s a bold and marmite-style of artistic expression, but it makes its point very well.
Is it enjoyable, though? Well, not for me, but (I think) that’s also the point. Part of me was able to stop clicking and hanging on for a lucky early win and just stop playing, and in a way, I felt like that was a win. I ended up playing this whilst watching Formula 1 to stop myself focusing on it. Then it became a passive experience, and I was far less annoyed at the whole thing. It also meant I could avoid my own annoyance at not being able to be the lucky guy with the lucky break. I can’t score this, or particularly recommend it either, but it is an experience I’m glad that’s out there for others to reflect over if they pick it up.
Strange. Artistic. Designed to be marmite. This is a game that defies scoring conventions. I’ll give it a 5/10 because it could be a 1 or a 10 for so many reasons. Unfair Flips is the Turner Prize of gaming.
Unfair Flips is out on Steam on 25th October. A review copy was provided by the developer.
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