CHAD CABLE

For years I was able to walk to work - a perfect excuse for having built in activity time as part of my daily routine. As such, I spent a lot of time walking. Fun fact: it's gets boring kind of quickly. You start to make a game out of not stepping on cracks. And then I took that thought to it's natural conclusion: a prototype!

To walk, simply press anywhere on the screen. Pressing the screen makes one of the feet move forward, and releasing the screen makes the other foot progress. This creates a surprising amount of tension, kind of like a rolling ball. Once it starts moving, it simply can't stop!

Levels are built using a text file, where every newline represents a section of sidewalk. The first two characters of each newline represent cracks. If the character is filled a crack is placed, and if the character is blank the section is skipped over. This system would be far too limited for a full game, but was great for quickly making and editing prototype levels.

Originally the game kicked you out after stepping on three cracks, but this prevented players from getting a chance to practice the mechanics. Instead stepping on a crack adds a five second penalty to your time.

Naturally, that meant building an online leaderboard! I looked around at some third party applications, but decided it was a good excuse to learn how to make Unity and a web database talk to one another. This system has since payed for itself many times over, anywhere from simple scores to sharing level data across multiple devices.

If nothing else, this prototype was a great reminder that less is more! There's a lot of fun to be found in super simple single input games.