A school shooting videogame made by the parents of a victim aims to change minds about gun control: 'This is not a scary game, it's an educational game'

The parents of 17-year-old Joaquin Oliver, a teen who was killed during the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have released a videogame that aims to convince Americans of the need for increased gun control by challenging players to survive a school shooting.

Released in September through Change the Ref, an organization founded by Manuel and Patricia Oliver in the aftermath of their son's murder, The Final Exam puts players alone in a fictional high school, caught in the midst of a school shooting. It's a linear trip through a locker room, gymnasium, and hallways, punctuated by interludes in which you hide from the nearby shooter, controlling your breathing via quicktime events. The game is also very brief, a playthrough taking roughly 10 minutes, which the website at thefinalexam.us says is the average length of a mass shooting incident in the US.

There's no blood or on-screen violence, and the shooter is only seen a few times as a shadowy, half-hidden figure. The audio, by contrast, is harrowing: Gunfire, distant screams, crying, alarms and sirens, and long moments of silence in which the only sound is your own heartbeat. Successfully evading potential death at a handful of preset moments will get you closer to escape and earn you one of five proposed gun control bills aimed at reducing the incidence of school shootings in the US: Mandatory background checks, a raise in the minimum age to purchase guns, and bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

«These halls represent the real-life horrors of hundreds of schools that have suffered mass shootings,» the Final Exam website states. «Places that were promised to be safe for children but were failed by our government.»

As brief and simplistic as it is, The Final Exam is one of the most grim things I've played in a very long time. More than once as I was skulking through dark rooms and halls, I was startled by a blast of too-near gunfire I was helpless to do