A man is born, lives, loves, loses, dies, and restarts in Consoul, an 8-bit movie by Lasse Gjertsen.
Consoul looks at the very different paths a person's life can take, using a retro 2D side-scroller game as a backdrop. As the main character ages his heart meter fills. Working adds to his money score, while feeding his family takes away from it. He works tirelessly to bring in money, only to have most of it gone by the end of each day.
Then he dies, and takes a different path.
Gjertsen crafted Consoul with friend Trygve Knudsen over the course of half a year. Gjertsen used Photoshop and After Effects to create the 8-bit style graphics, while Knudsen handled the brief bits of 3D animation that appears between "games."
Does the movie reduce life to a game, or distill it into a game? That's up to the viewer.
Thanks to Tyler for sending the clip our way.