A thought struck me at some point; we have 2D games and 3D games. (plus 4D games if you believe the advertising for Blinx the Time Sweeper) Is it possible to make a game in 1D? After a bit of deliberation, I narrowed a 1D game down to the following definition:
A game designed for, and whose graphics can be fully represented by, a horizontal row of coloured pixels.
Sound simple? That was kind of the point. View it as a challenge, if you will; can you design a game that simple? I’m skipping over controls a bit, but they can be as simple as you need; d-pad and two buttons anyone?
Anyway, here’s my starting effort; touch a tile to cycle it and the surrounding tiles’ colour through red, yellow and blue.
The basic goal would be to get all tiles the same colour; initially I had this at 5 tiles, but since the tile colours are purely random it could result in unwinnable game. It was simpler just to make it six tiles for the prototype, but the game feels quite easy now. If I don’t solve the ‘unwinnable scenario with 5 tiles’ problem (or even if I do) I’ve had some ideas of things to add:
- All Red/Yellow/Blue: get all the tiles to a specified colour
- Match the pattern: manipulate your tiles to match a pre-determined pattern
- Speed mode: Get all the tiles the same colour, board resets. Repeat as many times as you can in a time limit.
- Actual graphics – current ideas include a jewel skin and a xylophone skin (mental note: implement sound)
- Option of numbering the tiles instead of having to remember what colour comes next
Colin Chang
Colin Hamilton
Hazel McKendrick
Phillip Geyer
Searra Dodds
