Saturday, August 17, 2013

The Hackforge Summer Games Challenge :: Day One :: The Unbearable Lightness of Designing

For the next two weeks, I'm going to occupy my time trying to design games as I'm taking part in the Hackforge Summer Games.

The game may be of any medium - video, paper, street - but it must be created between between today and August 31st and it should somehow involve the theme : light and darkness.




I'm really too tired to make a proper start on the challenge tonight. But I did come up with these design concepts just before I had dinner (and that glass of wine that did me in). As an added bonus, I've added links to my inspirations.

GAME CONCEPTS I THOUGHT UP WHILE I WATCHED MY SON PLAY SOCCER AT THE FORD FIELD TEST TRACK AFTER SPENDING THE MORNING AT HACKFORGE AND THE WINDSOR PUBLIC LIBRARY


The screen begins as completely white. Then slowly, it starts to resemble a  photo that was overexposed by too much flash. As time pases, the an image from this photo begins to take shape. If this image is of a door or other means of escape, you should click on it. But if the image is one of a horrible a monster, and you click on it before you realize this, it will eat you. Wait too long before clicking and you will be eaten by an monster. In other words, there's no way to escape the monster.

There is a bright and beckoning light bulb that pulls you, a bug, toward it like gravity. But once you are too close you become completely under it's pull and are set towards a collision with death. You must gather a swarm of others to become so large that the swarm itself will block out its light, but in doing so, you must keep yourself and others far enough away so as not fall under the light's deadly attraction.

You are in a bleak land without night. The glare of the sun (or is it a camera? An unblinking eye?) is relentless. Can you escape its gaze? You travel far and wide and try to escape the ever watching eye. Eventually you learn to distract it with spectacle / riot, and take advantage of its overwhelmed state to throw yourself into an unknown, abyss that leads to an underground passage. You are enveloped in dark and by gentle earthly sounds. You are finally able to sleep and dream the game to an end.

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