Games from Nothing: Group Game #1 — Standoff Revisited

Screen Capture #007

In an attempt to introduce some kind of player choice to our black and white hostage game, we’ve decided to simply display different messages depending on which shape the player ends up murdering.  This seems appropriate since the only real mechanic is murdering people, albeit abstractly.  One of the hostage circles is a bank teller, and the other is The Doctor, who was just passing through. The player character is a hard-boiled alcoholic detective far past his prime, whose marksmanship is not what it used to be.  The enemy square is some mafioso character whose backstory doesn’t matter because he’s only there to get shot. That’s all pretty inconsequential but in this case it’s the only way of actually making the player’s choice mean something.  However bound we are to the cops-and-robbers template, in which the good guys shoot the bad guys, the good guys always have the option of doing some heinous villainy.  We haven’t included any motivation to murder the innocent circles, but without a plot or a scoring system there’s no real motivation to properly do your police job, either.  So the imagined dramatic arc is more of a thematic skeleton.  But that’s a summation of the player’s choice in ‘Take The Shot, Murphy’. It’s Groundhog Day but with only 4 possible outcomes, and they’re all rather nasty.

Screen Capture #008

our detective is the triangle object and doctor and bank teller are the hostages which are shown as a circle and the bad guy is represented with a square.

All 4 of the objects are bouncing on the x axis and the player has 3 attempts too shoot the bad guy which means has 3 attempts to be on the same x-axis with the bad guy. The goal is to be able to press the button/ tap the screen while they are sharing almost the same x values.

Screen Capture #010

Once you win the game this screen pops up and lets you know that you are the winner

Screen Capture #009

While you are trying to shoot the square the circle might get on the way and that kills the hostage which means you automatically lose the game.

After you either win or lose a game over screen pops up

Screen Capture #012

After you press one more time loop initializes and game restarts.

Ege Ozcan

Chris Manfugas

Author: Ege Ozcan