As I begin this article, my second monitor shows a black stick figure named “sugarman” jumping through a tan-ish room littered with red spikes. Sugarman dies several times, falling into pits of spikes while a one-minute timer ticks down on the top of the screen. When the clock hits 0, the name above the stick figure changes: “waget0812” is up; they die five times in under a minute and are replaced with “janosaurus2,” who is the same stick figure wearing a hat. And so it goes, with a queue of stick figures, some in hats, lined up at the bottom of the screen waiting to play. I am 101st in line.

This is Jono, one of the strangest platforming experiences I’ve come across, yet simultaneously very familiar to anyone who’s looked at people playing games on Twitch for more than a minute or two. Jono is a game which only one person, one person in the entire world, can play at a time. When you open it up, you’re presented with a view of their game, and the option to join the queue to play. Each person plays for one minute, or five deaths, whichever comes first, before control is handed off to the next person in line.

As a platformer, Jono is pretty basic: you’re a little guy who can jump and double jump, and that’s about it. Your goal is usually to get to a door located somewhere else on the screen. There are hazards, mostly red spikes that kill you and which sometimes appear out of nowhere, a little sprinkling of Kaizo.

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