330 Hours is a 2021 dystopian web story by Looperreallyreallyrocks. It can be read here
and here.
In the story a teenager named Jack Lane is selected to participate in a Deadly Game known as The Program.
The story has a sequel 330 Hours: Revolution.
This story contains examples of:
- After the End: The story is set several millenniums in the future after most of society has collapsed leaving few countries left.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Don dies an extremely horrifying and gruesome death, and even Jack is horrified by it. It helps that it wasn't even his fault that he was a villain in the first place, and he was essentially being controlled by the government.
- Anyone Can Die: Quite a few notable characters die mostly notably Caesar and Lee.
- Ax-Crazy:
- Don's team members are far less stable than he is and constantly giggle and crack jokes as he is killing his way to victory.
- Even Don himself qualifies to some degree given just how violent and quick to kill he is.
- Big Bad: Don Hunter technically serves as the main antagonist of the story as he is most direct and prominent threat while the Yofrenian government never even appears onscreen.
- Bittersweet Ending: While Jack is able to survive the games it comes at the cost of all of his teammates, and on top of that a mysterious man whispers to him that The Program is only the beginning.
- Canon Welding: The first paragraph includes references to two of the author’s previous stories A Case in Bucksville and The Adventures of a Sword.
- Child Soldiers: The competitors of Yofren were kidnapped and tortured to be soldiers in the game as children.
- Cliffhanger: The story ends with a mysterious man coming to the Jack and whispering that The Program is only the beginning, followed by a To Be Continued.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Compared to all the main villains of the author's previous stories, who are all one-dimensional Hate Sinks. Don Hunter is a much more sympathetic villain, as well as despite his crimes ultimately Forced into Evil by his government, due to being kidnapped as a child and tortured until he became a mindless killing machine.
- Deadly Game: The Program, what The Protagonist is forced to participate in.
- Dystopia: The setting of the story where most of society has collapsed and left a dictatorial government that forces people to participate in a Deadly Game.
- Earth All Along: Inverted we know from the beginning the place used to be Earth though it was now called Remia.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Don appears to be genuinely upset by the deaths of some of his team members. Said team members themselves also show angst at the deaths of their peers.
- Final Boss: Don virtually counts as this as he is the final (and most difficult) enemy the protagonists have to fight while the other Yofrenian contenders were significantly easier to take down.
- Forced into Evil: The competitors of Yofren qualify due to being kidnapped as children and tortured until they became mindless killing machines.
- The Future: The story is set in the year 8442.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Yofren government as a whole, as the ones who created the program in the first place and the ones behind Don, though they don’t play an active role in the conflict.
- Guile Hero: While not as competent as he is in Revolution, Jack does use quite a bit of brainwork, strategy, and improvisation to defeat Don and his team, ending up being the first non-Yofrenian contender to win.
- The Heavy: Don Hunter, who is the primary antagonistic threat throughout the story though is ultimately just a pawn of his government.
- Laughably Evil: Joe, Tom, Sal, and Wallace are all extremely over-the-top and goofy, singing and cracking jokes at every whim in contrast to the quiet and stoic Don.
- One-Man Army: Don manages to wipe out every single contenders bar Jack, and the finale has him holding his own against three people, with only one of them (Jack, obviously) surviving the fight.
- Please Wake Up: Jack is unable to accept Lee's death and tries to believe he is just injured.
- Rasputinian Death: Don gets speared in the chest, then stabbed in the face, then beaten with a wooden cabinet, then thrown off a balcony, then shot... then finally mauled to death by mechanical sharks. Justified in that the government genetically engineered him to withstand things that no human should be able to survive.
- Recycled Premise: A few young kids being selected to compete in a Deadly Game and our protagonist ends up in it and has to fight for his life, the story is in many ways very similar to The Hunger Games.
- Silent Antagonist: Don Hunter is a man of few words, and he has a total of sixteen lines in the entire story, all of them being under ten words long. Most of them occur during his confrontation scenes with Jack.
- Sole Survivor: Jack is the only one out of his team to survive The Program.
- The Stoic: Don shows very little emotion throughout most of the story, and his face never budges beyond a blank, lifeless expression. Not so much in the climax.
- Tempting Fate: Jack constantly assures Lee and Caesar that they'll survive the Program. News flash: they do not.
- Too Dumb to Live: Even though this was later painted as an act of courage, Jamie attacking Don with a shovel was... pretty foolish, to say the least.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Multiple characters are killed off before they can have any significant development, namely Milton and Jamie.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- Most (if not all) of Don's victims are children.
- The Yofrenian government was stated to have kidnapped multiple kids and brainwashed them into mindless killing machines.
