Overview
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"Dynamo" is an open-ended party game made for Move38's Blinks platform. Dynamo's core functionality is simple - It's light is powered by touch. Pressing the button will charge your dynamo, but the charge only lasts for ~1 second. With this core mechanic, we designed 3 different games with very flexible rules, and encouraged players to "think playfully" and create their own games.
I worked closely with the Move38 team to develop the game from initial concept to a published product. The game was featured in Move38's "Summer Games 2020" collection and sold through Move38's online store. |
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Role: Game Designer, Programmer
Organization: Independent
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"Dynamo" shipped with 3 individual sets of game rules:
- Power Struggle: A competitive, physical party game for 2+ players, where the only rule is to be the last player to keep your Dynamo alive.
- Bulb Juggler: A dexterity-focused game for 1+ players, where they must keep as many Dynamos alive as they can before one dies.
- Electron Drift: A game similar to "hot potato" or "egg toss", where any number of players pass a Dynamo tile back and forth across a playing surface, keeping it alive as long as possible.
"Following the Fun"
"Dynamo" started off originally as an experimental port of Anna Anthropy's game, "Chicanery". The original version of Chicanery tasked 2 competing players with holding down a key on their keyboard. The last player holding down their key is declared the winner. As a "self-effacing game" with abstracted rules, Chicanery quickly becomes a far more physical game than you might expect.
My goal with the original prototype of Dynamo was to see how this physicality can be affected when players have freedom of movement - rather than share a single device, players would instead be assigned an individual Blink that would remain on a playing surface, but would still have freedom of movement by being dragged around with a finger. I intended to keep in the spirit of Chicanery by providing abstract rules, encouraging players to do whatever they could to remain the last player alive.
What was surprising, however, was how play-testers managed to appropriate Dynamo for their own playful purposes. One tester ended up playing Dynamo without a playing surface altogether, having players in his game instead hold the Blink in their hands. This added a completely different level of physicality to the game than I had originally intended. Another tester, out of sheer whim, invented her own game of trying to keep a group of Dynamo Blinks alive as long as she could without letting one die. We ultimately decided to lean into this behavior, designing 3 games for a rule-book that would ship with Dynamo, while encouraging players to change up the rules or create their own games.
My goal with the original prototype of Dynamo was to see how this physicality can be affected when players have freedom of movement - rather than share a single device, players would instead be assigned an individual Blink that would remain on a playing surface, but would still have freedom of movement by being dragged around with a finger. I intended to keep in the spirit of Chicanery by providing abstract rules, encouraging players to do whatever they could to remain the last player alive.
What was surprising, however, was how play-testers managed to appropriate Dynamo for their own playful purposes. One tester ended up playing Dynamo without a playing surface altogether, having players in his game instead hold the Blink in their hands. This added a completely different level of physicality to the game than I had originally intended. Another tester, out of sheer whim, invented her own game of trying to keep a group of Dynamo Blinks alive as long as she could without letting one die. We ultimately decided to lean into this behavior, designing 3 games for a rule-book that would ship with Dynamo, while encouraging players to change up the rules or create their own games.
Flexible Gameplay
Beginning with the original concept, "Dynamo" was designed to be an open-ended gameplay experience; there was no "right way" to play the games. The rulebook is meant to serve more as a guideline, allowing players to play the outlined game with whatever rules they deemed "fun" or "fair", even going so far as to encouraging the creation of brand new games from scratch.
The 3 games shipped with Dynamo (from left: Power Struggle, Bulb Juggler, and Electron Drift), each with a fairly malleable set of rules.
This flexibility was possible largely due to the Dynamo's minimal process intensity - that is to say, the lack of complexity behind it's computational behavior.
Blinks have 3 primary functionalities:
Blinks have 3 primary functionalities:
- L.E.D.s to communicate states.
- A single button for player interaction.
- They can communicate to other Blinks for transferring game information.
Framing and Themeing
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As mentioned above, Dynamo's simplicity allows for many different options for theming, a requirement for the game to stand out in the Blinks product line. After much deliberation, we eventually opted to treat Dynamo as a "thing to play games with", rather than an individual set of games, with the definition of "Dynamo" representing the interaction the player has with the device.
Given the abstract nature of the Blink's L.E.D. display, there were plenty of options for choosing a unifying theme for the 3 games. Theming the game's artwork and rulebook around a steampunk aesthetic seemed to fit the name perfectly, and was unique enough to separate the game from the games in the Blinks catalogue. One of the biggest challenges, however, was properly framing the rule-book to encourage players to appropriate the games to their own fulfillment. While giving each individual game some thematic descriptions help set a playful mood, we hoped that suggesting variations of "house rules" would encourage players to explore the variety of ways they could play with Dynamo. For example, the rules for Power Struggle suggest: "Try playing with teams, or, for a more intense game, try playing without a flat surface. But be careful! Dynamos are tough, but not unbreakable!" |
Dynamo's Rulebook
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