Here’s my jam entry so far.  It’s called “Behind The Screen” and is in tribute to the late Ralph Baer (“Father of Video Games”).  You get requests from the game such as “Draw Player1” or “Add 1 to Player 1 Score” down the bottom of the screen at the DOS prompt – you need to react to it – do what you are requested to do.

This all happens between a refresh of the raster beam – using the timer at the top. The unseen players the other side of the screen are trying to play Pong and you are the computer.  You have a pixel budget which diminishes over time.  You need to draw pixels to make the paddles (or redraw the score) and then when a request such as “Move Player 1 Up” comes up in the DOS prompt, you spend your pixels on adding one to the top and removing one from the bottom of a paddle.

When the VSync happens the player is none the wiser and it looks like their paddle moves up the screen.  At the refresh of the screen the ball moves one pixel.  If you start stuffing up i.e dont draw the paddle in time or don’t update the score the player’s pain increases until they rage quit because of the “stupid game!!!!”.

To aide you is PixelMan who races around the screen turning pixels on and off for you.  Not sure this is actually fun to play right now, but only time will tell.