Some will find it humorous, and others will be frustrated with a specific end state that the game leaves players in. Regardless of where you may fall, it’s well in-line with the actions the developers have taken in the past with their first-person bullet hell, along the lines of other titles such as Pony Island breaking the fourth wall.
Bear in mind that we’ll be discussing spoilers in this piece for Superhot Mind Control Delete (colloquially Superhot MCD or SMCD); if you’d rather be pleasantly surprised (or unpleasantly, as the case may be) you’re barking up the wrong tree here.
At the end of the game, you’ll need to leave SMCD running for two and a half hours (originally eight hours) in order to play again; an action that the game calls a ‘reset’. At which point you can then go back to playing.
Admittedly, it’s a bit bizarre, even matching it against other titles known for their fourth-wall-breaking such as the aforementioned Pony Island, a fantastically charming title that shifts from sweet to bitter as the player progresses.
Some have taken to calling this move from the developers at Superhot Team way too far, insinuating that there is a possibility of the developers using cryptocurrency miners and the ilk as your PC is generally otherwise occupied while you’re waiting for the arbitrary clock to run down.
https://twitter.com/LazHimself/status/1285805652686798848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Others are noting that it’s a possible statement regarding videogame addiction in the modern era; an amusing notion when you consider that COVID-19 has the vast majority of the world still stuck inside while politicians bungle about as they are wont to do.
Still, the segment where you’re sitting there otherwise occupying your time is a bit outlandish, even compared to The Stanley Parable‘s famous five-year achievement, which is only gained from not playing the title for five years straight.
Strange, and well within the bizarre universe of The Stanley Parable.
This, however, isn’t an achievement: it’s how you continue to play once you’ve won.
Combine this with a second snarky snippet within the title: a 100-level run that players will need to complete without dying once for a very small modicum of lore, and it does start to edge onto the territory of just trolling your users because you can.
Regardless of how you look at these two, it has begun to adversely affect the Steam reviews of SMCD as players begin to reach the stage where ‘developer-led griefing’ begins to rear its head a bit more than some users are comfortable with.