While searching Aptoide for a good app to read the Qur'An I encountered what seemed at first to be an ad for a poorly designed mobile game and potentially a datamining app. Reassured that Aptiode would not list an app that would be outright a virus I installed it and lo! My search for spiritual guidance was over.

What appeared at first to be a crude game designed only to show the player adverts revealed itself to be a veritable thesaurus of life wisdom. The player is put in the position of a crocodile and tasked with only the thing that we are all tasked with: fulfilling our holy nature-duty: dharma. The noble scaly beast that we all subcutaneously want to become, ravages the shores in an endless hunt for human pray. Oh how puny and silly are humans in their swimming shorts, standing at the beach and screaming at the mere sight of a huge crocodile! This third perspective upon humans teaches us of human vulnerability. Our only hope when confronted with a crocodile is to run and hope that the player will accidentally un-click the run function, allowing the human NPC to change directions and flee to safety, at least until the crocodile picks up speed again. Humans try to shield themselves behind armed guards who attempt to shoot the player, but, ironically, one of the missions pitches us against the hunters and so the roles are reversed: those who would hunt the crocodile are made pray by virtue of game mechanics: the highest authority of the game.

The bloodlust of the crocodile is not motivated by a quest for satiety, but rather it's understanding of the highest obligation it has: to be a crocodile. We also, as the player, feel fully that, to quote the game "IT'S NOT ENOUGH YOU HAVE TO KILL MORE". If only the current generation took to heart such inspiring messages! This mantra is fulfilled both in quantity and variety, as the crocodile devours humans, but also sheep, snakes and wolves, to then stand before the final challenge: killing the other crocodile. While the crocodile killed in order to be a crocodile and precisely because it already is a crocodile, the final challenge is to overcome the other. The pinnacle of a crocodile's development is to conquer another crocodile's territory... or is it?

SPOILER: there is no pinnacle. Upon (b)eating the last adversary, the player is left in the level to fend for themselves, with no opponents or prompts for what to do. We experience Heideggerian geworfenheit in crocodile skin. We are made to wonder aimlessly until we ponder the true meaning of our life and gameplay. We may be tempted to regret, thinking that perhaps one should have instead negotiated with the other crocodile for territory instead of killing it, but soon true enlightenment comes: the real adversary was us, the old crocodile, whom we have to replace, buying a new skin from the game shop to play the game again, this time wrapped in a national flag. It is hard to find a more poignant critique of nationalism as fundamentally absurd, something that clothes us with meaning while we associate value to it on account of the high in-game price we have paid to become coloured in this or another way. Of significance is also the hierarchy of national flags, with the British flag being the most costly to buy. Perhaps this is a reference to Kipling's "The English Flag": we need to scatter the bones of many a human to obtain it in our bestial form. Upon obtaining a new skin from the shop we are able to return to any level of our choice and replay it. This is a perfect metaphor for life.

While Crocodile Simulator may seem at first a dismal game it is one that I return to often and cannot recommend enough. Within the field of mobile gaming it stands as a shining tower of philosophical sophistication, with strong existentialist overtones, but without the pessimism and defeatist attitude of Sartre or the empty absurdism of Camus. The game is purely Nietzschean in that it embraces the eternal return to the beach and the will to overpower humans and eat them. The crocodile is not slave to hunger, but rather wills to be hungry. Similarly we, the player, have no obligation to keep playing, but want to play, because we understand that the crocodile needs to be fed not because it is hungry, but because it is a crocodile. 

I will close with a small tip: you can avoid having to watch any ads if you simply disconnect from the internet while playing the game - ads will not show.