Game ideas - keycube/K3_embedded_game GitHub Wiki

The game ideas explained below would take place inside the cube. In other words, the screen would virtualize the 5 other faces of the cube as if the cube was hollow and keyboard keys could be seen from the inside of the cube. This "materialist" approach lets us use each key based on its position instead of its functionality, as the key setup is quite unusual and would throw off players. See images below for a better explanation.

3D Pong concept

The first idea we had was "3D Pong" (initially conceived as a solo game, but could easily be extended with multiplayer functionality). In this game, a ball would bounce inside the K3, and the player is tasked with keeping it in-bounds. In order to do that, whenever the ball is about to hit one of the cube's surfaces, the player must predict which tile it would hit, and press the corresponding key on the K3. Then, the tile will appear to be pushed inwards, allowing the ball to collide with it and keep going.

Since the game takes place inside of a cube, the ball trajectory would be three-dimensional, but most of its velocity would tend to be parallel to the game's screen, in order to simplify game reading.

This game concept may be hard to pull off properly, as the fixed point-of-view would make understanding the distance between the screen and the ball difficult for players. To compensate for this, we could add projections of the ball on each face of the cube, as represented by the red dotted lines on the image. They would work sort of like shadows, except on every surface. Another idea would be to adjust the ball's radius according to its depth inside the cube, as it would make the ball's position on at least one axis pretty easy to understand for players.

Pattern Matching concept

The second idea was a sort of pattern-matching arcade game. In this game, the player would be inside of the K3 again. Every tile on the 4 main surfaces would be able to be toggled on/off with one press of the corresponding key. Regularly, tiles will be toggled by themselves, and it's up to the player to make the opposing surfaces match perfectly. The player wouldn't be able to toggle the tiles that were automatically toggled, and is instead forced to make the correct changes on the other side. Any tile that doesn't match its opposite for too long will deplete the player's HP.

The player would have a total HP of 3, giving a little room for error. The game would then go on for as long as the player's still alive, increasing the score each time a tile/surface is matched with its opposite. The automatic toggles would get progressively faster as the game goes on.

To give a little more spice to the idea, multiple additional mechanics could be added: for instance, a combo mechanic which would reward toggling tiles correctly in a speedy manner with a temporary score multiplier. Other kinds of tiles that would require a different response (such as holding the key instead of pressing it once) could also be implemented.

Other ideas

• TNT run
• Rubik's cube (reproduce real life movement by sliding fingers on multiple keys)
• Round up or match two points by creating a path with keys