Design Challenge #1 - Single Key Game Design

[zoombapup]

Ok, to ring in the new year, lets start a little challenge thread.

I challenge you, dear designer type. To design a game idea, where the user has only ONE key, which can be any key you like, but must only allow on/off input.

Things to think about:

Key state (on/off)
Key state change frequency (how fast/slow you bash the key)
Key state timing (bashing the key at the right time)

Pretty much any combination of those will work, but can you think of anything really creative to do with it? (Note: try not to copy anyone else's idea, try and just think of something from your own intuition).

[Hamumu]

Already done! http://hamumu.com/gamelets.php (the third one down, Ninja Academy). I and many others did this for the Retro Remakes 1-button contest about a year ago. I spent a long time working on a much bigger version of the game, but dropped it.

[impossible]

Actually I'd like to see this be a monthly or bi-monthly thing. Something like the BGDF (http://www.bgdf.com) design challenge with everyone turning in small games or prototypes. I assume you wanted people to just post ideas?

[fog4711]

Already done here too with my freeware MaxD:

www.jonax.se/envc.php

Obviously the concept is not mine :o but from a very well-known idea by one of the great physicists - James C. Maxwell

fog :)

p.s. Great thread - it's always good to be inspired to a little unconventional thinking.

[ZeHa]

There was a game for the "Crap Game Contest", it was called "Don't Press Any Key" ;) it was really funny, as soon as you pressed a key, you lost the game and it told you how many seconds you "survived" ;)

[zoombapup]

impossible: I dont mind if you post a design OR a game..


Hey guys! using your OLD games aint fair!! :)

What I'd like to see, is some kind of design summary.. maybe a few images.. make it a bit more interesting right?

I suppose we need a time limit.

How about 1 week.. yes, 1 week to post with a design idea here. Try and be as clear as possible, it'll be good practice!

[undersan]

Here's an idea for a fast-paced puzzle game. Let's call it Signal, and the basic concept should be familiar to any computer- or electrical-engineer:

The user controls the input signal with a key or button (key down = blue, key up = red). The clock signal, on the other hand, changes automatically, at a regular frequency. Every time the clock signal "ticks" (changes), the input is "read" and something happens. The clock would run at a frequency of about 1 Hz.

Phew! Did that make any sense? It's basically a quirky way to force the user to make quick binary (red-or-blue) choices. It's also visually interesting, I think.

In keeping with the computer theme, the puzzles would be inspired by classic computer science problems. In my screenshot above, I've hinted at some kind of sorting problem. Perhaps the user repeatedly splits and merges the lists of tokens, with the ultimate goal of "matching 3". This would be just one of many mini-games, but all would re-use the tokens and the two arrows.

http://www.ericology.com/temp/signal.gif

[GBGames]

Here's an idea for a fast-paced puzzle game. Let's call it Signal, and the basic concept should be familiar to any computer- or electrical-engineer:


Heh, wow! That actually looks like it would be a lot of fun, and it could obviously be themed in many ways so it can appeal to people who won't immediately claim "Oh, I'm no good at math". B-)

Good job for coming up with that one!

How about a game where you charge and fire a weapon?

Basic rules:
When you hold the button down, you are charging the weapon. When you let go, the charging stops. When you press the button again, you fire the charged up shot. The more charged the shot, the more powerful.

Now there are a few paths to take. If a highly charged shot is always more valuable, then the game might put obstacles in the way that force the player to shoot more often than he/she may like. Another option is to make targets of varying sizes. If you shoot with too much charge, you'll hurt things you shouldn't. If you shoot with too little charge, you'll do insufficient damage.

And once again, it could be themed in various ways to appeal to people who don't like shooting and damage.

[zoombapup]

Ok, after far too much faffing, here's my first one click design (I've got 4 so far).

http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/userimages/2/2b16c079f03e33787ae51cb94f06b98f_o.jpg

[Andy]

Awesome Phil! Awesome! :D

There is the link to your game: http://www.gamesheep.com/game/horsey-racing/

;)

[alfie]

I will resist the temptation of simply pointing to some of my games, so here goes my attempt at a 1 key creative design:
Game Name: Wonky: It’s a dogs life (named after your character Wonky the dog).
Setting: A 2d maze with Wonky’s hutch in the centre.
Goal: Go about your typical doggy business and survive.
Start of Game: 3 lives for Wonky, 1 full Wonky Energy bar, 1 empty reward energy bar, 1 four direction arrow indicator with North lit up, empty maze except for Wonky’s hutch.
Game starts: Wonky walks out of his hutch (facing west)looks around, his energy bar reduces very very slowly.
A stick appears in the East of the maze with a countdown timer above it with 15 seconds on it and the reward energy bar is a ¼ full.
Wonky Control: Press and release the Spacebar once for the directional arrow to move 1 position clockwise and repeat until it is in the direction you want to travel.
Walking and running is achieved by the speed at which you pump the Spacebar. Be carefull though because the faster you go the more energy you will use! Run out of energy and one of your lives is gone, and you are back at the hutch.
Other items that could appear in the maze:
A tree, well a dog as to do his business!
Food, a dogs got to eat…full energy bar for a bowl of food, but watch out for other dogs that might appear because they might get it before you!
A couple of question marks at the far north and far south of the maze, which one is the bone and which one is one of those buried ET games? Very common items, so the energy reward bar is only 10% full.
Other dogs, keep away from these or the 25% of energy in the reward bar will be taken off YOUR energy bar.
Cat (we will call him Kevin after one of my brothers cat). Now, Kevin his a savage who can fight like telepathic ninja twins! So Wonky is going to need 70% of his energy bar to beat him, but if he has not then it will cost him a lifeL . I told you he was a savage!
Bump into those nice humans and as well as a full reward energy bar they will take you a full walk around the maze and you wont use any energy…nice of em!
A bed appears at your hutch. Go get some sleep/ whilst your energy bar slowly fills up to the top, when you can move out of your hutch again. No moving until it gets to the top though, even if your favourite chewy toys are all over the maze and some burglar is on there collecting them all! Go get him when it’s full and get them all back, but not before chewing on his (or her, to be PC) ass!
A female dog on heat. Forget about trying to make him walk or even jog when this appears, he is on a mission and all you can do is control the direction he heads in because he will run like the wind! His energy is going to go down fast, but like all dogs, if he runs out of energy he wont lose a life but go into crawl mode until mission accomplished or she is gone. An extra life and full energy bar though if old Wonky can do his duty!
Phew, I really enjoyed that! (not as much as Wonky of course J ).

[Grey Alien]

Zeha: That's pretty funny.

How about a B.B.King One Finger Solo game? You mission is to creatively press the key to make the solo sound great and make the audience cry.

[Bmc]

Here is mine, I did it up pretty quick so it's sort of sloppy. Hopefully it's clear enough though :)

Name: Rock & Roll Drummer

Look/feel: very old-school graphics and sound (think NES era).

Dead center in the middle of the screen, a little dude sites behind a drum kit.

To his lower-right and lower-left are the bassist and guitarist.

On top of the screen is a track, in the center of this track is a target of sorts.

Clusters of symbols representing drum beats move from right to left on the track. Each cluster will contain beats of 2 different colors/types that represent normal, advanced.

At the bottom of the screen, under the band is what I'll call the "Rhythm" meter. It's divided into 2 sections, a green section on the left and a red section on the right(think of the dancing games in Rayman Ravin Rabbids). Green is positive, red is negative.


Goal of the game is to turn the Rhythm meter completely green.

To do this the player must successfully complete clusters of beats.
Every time a player successfully completes a cluster, a chunk of the rhythm meters turns green.
The guitarist and bassist get more animated as the bar gets more green. Less animated as the bar gets more red.

Every time a player fails, a chunk of the the rhythm meter turns red.

If the rhythm meter goes completely red the player lose.

To successfully complete a cluster of beats, the player must click the left mouse button (or alternatively the space bar) when a note is in the target.

By default
the player only needs to hit the normal beats to successfully complete a cluster
If a player hits an advanced beats, than they will have to hit all subsequent advanced beats (in addition to the normal beats) in the cluster to clear it.

Hitting the advanced beats will up the rhythm meter quicker than just hitting the normal beats, which is a key part of the following mechanic....

Every time a player successfully completes a cluster of beats, and a chunk of the rhythm bar turns green, at the new end of the green chunk a white line will appear. This white line will move to the right end of the rhythm bar.
If the player can manage to get the green part of the rhytm bar past the white line they will get a "drum roll" power-up.
Now if the player managed to hit all the advanced beats in the cluster, the white bar will actually appear where it would of if they only hit the normal beats... so it would be much easier to get the "Drum roll" powerup.

What is a drum roll powerup and how is it used?
Simple. The player would hold down the mouse button before a cluster of beats to activate it, and keep it held down until the cluster is done. Every single beat in the cluster would be hit automatically... one drum roll powerup can be used on one cluster of beats, but the player can stockpile the power-up so it's possible that they can get many.

Levels will be broken into sets of 2-3 short songs each. with small breaks in-between each song were the band guys would say funny things to the crowd.

[GBGames]

Nice, Bmc! The drum roll power up is really cool, and it seems like a nice reward for hitting those advanced timings. It's kind of like giving the player rockstar power in Guitar Hero.

[scriptedfun]

DonationCoder.com recently held an accessibility game coding contest (http://www.donationcoder.com/Contests/agame/), where the games have to be switch (one-button) games and/or audio-only. The contestants have posted their entries at their forum (http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?board=174.0), and I think judging is currently underway. I think that the entries are pretty good! Please try my entries (http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=6894.0) :)

[Polycount Productions]

Ok, to ring in the new year, lets start a little challenge thread.

I challenge you, dear designer type. To design a game idea, where the user has only ONE key, which can be any key you like, but must only allow on/off input.

Things to think about:

Key state (on/off)
Key state change frequency (how fast/slow you bash the key)
Key state timing (bashing the key at the right time)

Pretty much any combination of those will work, but can you think of anything really creative to do with it? (Note: try not to copy anyone else's idea, try and just think of something from your own intuition).

Oh dear, I start remember what those old C64 games got you bashing your joystick. This certainly sounds like an opportunity to make similar to help killing your mouse/keyboard button.

[Sol_HSA]

three words:
hot air balloon

[Rod Hyde]

My weird and twisted mind has come up with The Morse Code of the Dead.

Like The Typing of the Dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead), but with morse code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code).

This could so easily be a multiple player game - one key per player.

To make it a bit easier, a tree of dot/dash choices can be presented (if you think about it, morse is essentially a binary tree based loosely on letter frequency) but the player's score will be reduced if this is used.

--- Rod

[scriptedfun]

three words:
hot air balloon

The Balloon Trip mode in the NES game Balloon Fight has mechanics very similar to this. You can actually play that mode without the D-Pad using one button only and still have fun :)

[Garthy]

This is the game I'd make if I had a large amount of money and resources available and a willingness to risk losing them all in developing a one-button game. Since we're just after a design, here it is....

Intervention.

Intervention follows a single day in the life of Joe (or Jane) Average. Joe wakes up in the morning, makes some breakfast, goes off to work, does an honest day's work, goes home, and goes to sleep.

This is where you come in.

In following Joe's life, you can intervene at any point by hitting the button. This causes a disruption of some sort to affect the current camera target in some way. For example, hit the button when the camera is pointing at Joe and he may pause for a moment. Hit the button when it is pointing at his feet and he'll trip up. Hit is when the camera is on a friend and they will stumble or decide to do something out of the ordinary. Hit it when he's about to grab a mug of coffee and he'll spill it. And so forth.

These minimal interventions cause subtle shifts in the storyline. Perhaps he'll spill his cereal and run late for work. Perhaps Joe will miss his bus. Perhaps Joe will be narrowly missed by a car on the way to work. Perhaps it won't miss at all. Maybe he'll bump into a friendly stranger because he's running ten seconds late. Maybe that stranger will be a secret agent. Or an alien in disguise. Or a love interest. Or a wanted criminal.

The idea of the game is to explore the huge number of outcomes possible in the space of a single day due to minor variations in circumstances. The whole butterfly-in-Tibet thing.

It'd be an interesting gimmick at least.

[jefferytitan]

In following Joe's life, you can intervene at any point by hitting the button. This causes a disruption of some sort to affect the current camera target in some way. For example, hit the button when the camera is pointing at Joe and he may pause for a moment. Hit the button when it is pointing at his feet and he'll trip up. Hit is when the camera is on a friend and they will stumble or decide to do something out of the ordinary. Hit it when he's about to grab a mug of coffee and he'll spill it. And so forth.

Very cool idea... I like it. But I agree it wouldn't be a no-budget game. ;)

[electronicStar]

This is the game I'd make if I had a large amount of money and resources available and a willingness to risk losing them all in developing a one-button game. Since we're just after a design, here it is....

Intervention.

Intervention follows a single day in the life of Joe (or Jane) Average. Joe wakes up in the morning, makes some breakfast, goes off to work, does an honest day's work, goes home, and goes to sleep.

This is where you come in.

In following Joe's life, you can intervene at any point by hitting the button. This causes a disruption of some sort to affect the current camera target in some way. For example, hit the button when the camera is pointing at Joe and he may pause for a moment. Hit the button when it is pointing at his feet and he'll trip up. Hit is when the camera is on a friend and they will stumble or decide to do something out of the ordinary. Hit it when he's about to grab a mug of coffee and he'll spill it. And so forth.

These minimal interventions cause subtle shifts in the storyline. Perhaps he'll spill his cereal and run late for work. Perhaps Joe will miss his bus. Perhaps Joe will be narrowly missed by a car on the way to work. Perhaps it won't miss at all. Maybe he'll bump into a friendly stranger because he's running ten seconds late. Maybe that stranger will be a secret agent. Or an alien in disguise. Or a love interest. Or a wanted criminal.

The idea of the game is to explore the huge number of outcomes possible in the space of a single day due to minor variations in circumstances. The whole butterfly-in-Tibet thing.

It'd be an interesting gimmick at least.
Hehe nice idea, that would make a very fun game.

[alfie]

This discussion inspired me to make a one button game. Just announced it over in the announcement section. I will not double post, so check it out...oooh and it's got an original but not creative name: Alfies Game :D .

Now, after getting distracted by this game, I am getting back to the games I was working on before Zoombapup started this thread ;) .