Break40
History
The model of progress and difficulty used here is borrowed from Twister, and the basic functionality is modified from FingerInDike.
Muddy hill
Action translates to progress, lack of action translates to loss of prior progress. For as simple as this is to construct and explain, it embodies an important message of progress as transient, and this is generally not the message conveyed by arcade games (progress is one-way until total loss), most console games (progress is preserved when doing nothing), or most casual games (progress is automatic).
Difficulty ramp
A subtle gradient is applied to the time steps between counter decrement based upon the player’s score. For the first point, the player has 1.1 seconds to reach the second. From the 39th point, the player has only 0.7 seconds to reach point 40. This is entirely possible to do - and even to exceed by some amount - but this interactive algorithm highlights a method of trying to “meet someone where they’re at,” and plays to the sunk cost progress compulsion (see MirrorMaze) such that the deeper someone has gone into it, the more reason there is to continue, particularly as that known target of 40 draws within reach.
Instruction-free
No title screen, no instructions, no end summary (no end), etc. I don’t think that such devices were needed for this program, and as the old design rule-of-thumb goes, if something does not contribute to the designed object’s purpose then it is probably a distraction from those elements that do.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
“no instructions”
I wish to differ. ‘Break 40′, though it doesn’t explain HOW, is clearly an instruction to my mind, setting a goal.
Had that instruction not been present, I might have not been as committed to play until that point, though equally I may have continued playing for longer, trying to raise the score further. The fact that a few words can have such an effect on me is almost worrying, but there you go.
March 1st, 2008 at 10:25 am
Hmm… interesting to note the title as instructions, since it is the only pre-game information provided.
If a box of Legos came without an instruction manual, but there was a photograph on the box of the finished figure, I suppose I might use that as my guide, but I suppose this is even a little more instructioney since the initial goal is less explicit than with legos (connect’em).
I have never bothered to get to 45. It’s rather hard to do so, but theoretically possible. But I can’t help but think that had I called the game Break 42, someone would do the task until reaching 42, and maybe even if I had called the game Break 45… cognitive psychology and interface design can provide theoretical maximums for this type of interaction, but I suspect that we’re going nowhere near it by score 40.
And, as you suggested, it provides a cutoff point. Had I called the game Break 35, I think few people, if any, would have gone to 40.
Thanks for the comment!