Embedded Files
This is the date I found on this old game concept image file.
In more recent years -
I've greatly enhanced this game concept.
Flip-out is a game that combines both an analog object with a virtual environment -
to deliver a game with endless challenges.
Imagine a black cube - just large enough to open and place your smartphone inside.
On one side of the cube is a hole marked with a green ring around it.
On the other side, and diagonally opposite, one more hole with a red ring.
Nothing else visible on the cube surfaces.
The corners are smoothed so as not to be too sharp.
Before placing the smartphone in the cube, you launched the 'flip-out' app.
You hear music.
Grab the cube in one hand with the green hole facing upward.
Place the other hand under the cube where the other hole is positioned.
Shack the cube a little.
A black marble falls out and the music changes.
This is how flip-out starts every play session.
Take the marble and with the green hole facing skyward,
drop it into the green hole.
You feel and hear the marble impact something inside the cube.
If you are playing flip-out for the first time -
with a simple tilt in the right direction -
the marble falls out the red hole.
In time,
I will explain what happens mechanically within the cube.
But the real brains is within the smartphone app.
It's able to simulate the otherwise impossible.
Flip-out is a game that makes the mind think -
something real is happening within the cube using no visual senses -
only sound and vibrations.
The only visual is when the marble enters and exits the cube.
As you can see from the date,
the possibility of flip-out was discovered almost two (2) decades ago -
before smartphones were real popular.
But the key to being able to actually build it -
came with the brains and sensors and gyroscopes and vibrators -
that are already within the smartphones.
Now, today,
the cube is all that is needed -
on the physical side.
With a simple marble capture and release mechanism -
the games all involve -
getting the marble through a maze of tunnels and doors and secrets.
These mechanisms would be too costly or impossible -
in the real physical world of component construction.
But with smartphones -
the physically impossible can easily be done within the virtual world.
The software will help stretch the imagination -
with sound and vibration and positioning as the only clues to the player.
The blind will be able to play flip-out -
maybe better than those with sight.
Maybe even those with autism will do better -
than those with less of it.
Flip-out will be a game -
where players share discoveries with each other,
so everyone can advance through the endless challenges.
Each level ends with the marble falling out.
This is when level success is known.
No one, other than the software designers,
knows what comes next -
except each level is harder or new possibility is included.
Every time the marble is dropped into the green hole -
the device catches and holds the marble.
If the player completes the level -
then the app signals the mechanism with light (maybe) -
to release the marble -
at which time it drops out the exit hole.
I will list the things that can happen within the boundless space within the mind of a developer and player within the cube space:
It's important that the player can picture the marble within the confines of cube's real-world limits of space and time, but the marble be be imagined to shrink in size such that the volume becomes almost limitless relative to the marble size. So endless maze size will help to establish harder and harder levels.
Components within the maze structure need not be static. Imagine secret passage doors that slide open because of timing or trigger events.
Think about order or sequence of events as a means of triggering structural changes to passageways.
Think about the marbles sound as it rolls and impacts surfaces.
Think about the music tempo as a clue to getting closer or farther away from the next required marble initiated event.
Think about pausing in a position or speeding through a series of tunnels.
Consider other creatures crawling around and getting in the way.
Consider arbitrary positioning of the cube, when the marble gets suck in a trap, to get it out of its stuck position.
Imagine events that require multiple players get to a spot to open a secret passage to get out. So the level is not just about you getting there first. This encourages openness of discovery vs. secrecy to be the top performer.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse