I would like to talk about simplicity in game design and controls. Pong, one of the first games in the world, its main control was an up and down button. In the old days when game consoles had only a few buttons to press and look what great games were created with those simple controls; Tetris, Mario, Asteroids, etc.. Don’t mistaken me, I do like to play complicated games but sometimes I just miss the old “not using all buttons in the game controller game”. For example, have you ever heard of a game called Canabalt? The entire game uses only 1 button and it’s very addicting.

When I was looking more about Canabalt and found an interesting competition called “Experimental Game Play”. The concept of the competition is that each month, they will have a new theme for everyone to compete in. One of the themes that I liked most is call “10 seconds is long enough in March”. Every game was based on a 10 second rule but how to use it is different. Some games took 10 seconds to finish such as the game called “Run Jesus Run”. Other games used 10 seconds for a timer to complete specific tasks like “I can hold my breath forever”. The idea is how to manipulate the theme “10 seconds”. In my opinion, games nowadays are quite complex and that makes the controls complex too. Why don’t people use a simple concept with simple controls?

It’s not like simple game concepts aren’t sellable because if you look at VVVVVV which you only have 3 controls (walk left, walk right, flip), Canabalt (1 button game) or a game from the 10 second competition like “10 second war, by Almost” which is at sellable quality in my opinion.

To conclude, I enjoy seeing these types of games as much as those AAA games that come out and I would like to see more and more of these “small and addicting new concept games” in the future.

- Intara