It’s possible to make a game without inputs nor any player action? What would make it different from a movie or an animation? That’s what I tried to answer while making this game.
So it all started a while ago, while thinking about the definition of videogame. The classic definition of a game stands that a game needs graphics or sound (any output could apply here) that respond to actions of the person who plays the game. So I wanted to break that definition a bit.
The problem of making a game without inputs was that without any variations would be like a normal animation. That’s why I needed to find a way to change the output of the game without the player’s inputs could affect it. Then, it struck into my mind. The answer was luck! By using luck, I could make the game diferent every time you open it and I would be able to add some gaming elements, like highscores for example.
Then I started to think about an idea. I was looking forward something really stupid but not in an obvious way. At the end I chose to make a game where you’re a dartboard, twisting the classic shooting games. After picking the theme of my game, I started to make the graphics. They maybe aren’t especially nice, but the objective of this was really to make an experiment. After that I started looking out for a song, and I found the excellent Deuces in incompetech.com. The jazzy feeling of this tune helped the game transmit a pretty relaxing sensation, and reinforced the mood of the game.
After that I decided to program it, and to make some numbers. I decided that you would gain points when the man shooting darts failed and the game would finish when a dart hit you once. Because of my will to maintain a game without inputs, the menus are automatic: between every game you have 3 seconds to see your high score before the next one starts. Then I decided the chance of a dart to hit you. At the end I thought 1 every 5 shots, a round 20%, would make the cut, because you won’t lose the game too soon and it won’t drag for too long (my maximum score is 20).
Well, so that’s about it. I don’t really know why I did wrote that (especially because I’m pretty sure someone did something similar to this in the past), but I just wanted to do it. Thanks for reading this article, and sorry for any grammatical errors (I’m not a native!). Now, are you ready to test your luck?