I’m not sure Minimalism should have escaped the Slaughter.

LD48 encourages minimalism anyway due to the time constraint.

I love minimalism as an aesthetic.  I have no idea what to do with it as a theme to base a game design on.  

Is it even a theme?  I am not sure that it is.  I’m happy to be proven wrong by the 1000+ entries that end up getting submitted.  I just hope there are more than a few really good ones

So I made my game the minimal viable game possible.  It’s not really interactive in the usual sense.  You only interact with it to start it.  If you start, you’ve already lost.  “The only winning move is not to play.”  So it recalls 80’s hacker film nostalgia.  It’s ironically self-negating.  It’s meta.  It’s an art game. It’s a slap in the face of the player, frankly.  And a flipping of the bird to the theme voters and the selection process.  Wooo, csanyk is rebellious!

What went well:

1. I came up with an idea very quickly.
2. I didn’t waste a lot of time.
3. Second submission of the compo!
4. It’s really, really minimal!

What didn’t:

1. A sarcastic un-game isn’t really all that fun.
2. As a joke, it’s witty, but perhaps too dry to be humorous.
3. A bit of a one-trick pony.  0 replayability.

Tags: minimalism, The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play