Failed keyboard Twister

So it turns out keyboards are fickle little bastards.

I spent the first three hours of LD50 prototyping a simple concept. First you have to press down one button, then a second, then a third and so on. By the time you get to the first or fourth button you're starting to realize that you'll have to twist your hands around into some pretty acrobatic poses to pull this off. By the 11th you're realizing you might need to call a friend.

It didn't quite work right though. Changing button down triggers and checks didn't fix it. Soon I realized the issue - the code wasn't the problem.

It's the damn hardware.

See cheap keyboards are, well, cheap. So while each key that we see and interact with is a distinct button, underneath they're grouped up to save circuits. I can register presses from Q, P, Z, and M at the same time on my $17 Logitech K120. If I try to press H, J, K, and L at once I can only register any two at a time.

It's a shame because I think this mechanic really works - I've watched several people do it in from of me and it's funny and frantic and all the things I look for in a game. And the feedback from strangers on the internet playing the game is the same - this is fun if you have the hardware.

Anyway, I pushed forward with a lesser version and tried to wrap some narrative around it to compensate.

Monetized Sleeping

What's inevitable?

You know when there's a really good app or website, and everyone finds it such a joy to use? And then it gets VC money, and has to expand and add a bunch of ways to make more money and appeal to more users? And then it gets stuck in this cycle and keeps taking more money and making things more unpleasant until you can't remember why you liked it in the first place?

That, and you're going to have to get up and go to work at some point. Snooze buttons are one of those little things that clearly have a utility and a downside. You get a few more minutes of sleep, but it's compromised and bad quality, and if you abuse it it's worse than not having used it at all.

It's not a huge leap to see these two things converging one day.

Thankfully Pokémon Sleep has just vanished into the ether, there's no way it was going to be good for humanity. I probably still would've played it.

I'm pretty happy how this fever dream of the worst parts of tech and capitalism came together. Play it here, I'd love to hear what you think: RISR