Three Hundred

By: Derek Yu

On: May 30th, 2007

Negative Space Wars

No, it’s not what you think! Sean Howard, aka “Squidi,” has embarked upon a noble quest:

“Simply put, a challenge to myself. Every day for three hundred days, I will post a gameplay mechanic that has (hopefully) never been seen in a commercial video game. Three hundred mechanics. No more. No less.”

Wow! He’s already 21 days into it, and it’s a super interesting read, and best of all the ideas are all illustrated with Squidi’s inimitable (heh heh) pixel style. All the ideas are free for anyone to use, also. I love it. Keep going, Squidi!

(Source: selectbutton)

  • Guert

    Wow!
    I’ll be checking his page out oftenly!
    Cheers for Squidi! :D

  • http://www.distractionware.com Echo

    This is fantastic!

  • Pigbuster

    Once I actually get my platformer engine working, I’m totally giving that negative space idea a try.

    Hope he can make it to 300. He’s already off to a great start.

  • PoV

    Nice. Squidi lives. Last I heard he was pissing off webcomic fans.

    A couple idea’s I’ve seen before. Adam T had a negative space concept Atari like game that seemed somewhat flawed, but Grey Matter’s “grey” is a fantastic fix. At one point Lex and I discussed a text snipped level editing system, in the same vein as the image save. Though it would have been technically easier to use, as all you’d need to do was copy to the clipboard a level found on a forum, and click a “play from clipboard” option in game. I think he added some variant of this to Zen Garden. Related, I never got around to it, short of registering a domain, a Wiki content driven game, where all in game content from enemies to world/rooms are defined in easy ascii, internal wiki links, and interpreted by a client.

    Procedurally generated tree, freaking awesome idea. Card crafting system, looks like it needs nonstandard cards. Pellet Quest, very cool.

  • Aubrey

    Cool idea, and looking really interesting so far, but you need a comments section so that we can have fun trying to trump your mechanics with ones which already exist :D. It’s like Schaden Freude created as a website.

  • Aubrey

    You may find out, then, how I felt when I found out about Liquid War.

  • Akhel

    Oh wow. This is… awesome. I love this kind of idea, and he’s doing a really awesome job there.

  • Albert Lai

    Three hundred? That man has my props!

  • Zenith

    This is amazing and brilliant! :)

  • negative zero

    brilliant…they’re all brilliant concepts. that stategy platforming one, very nice. that tree diagram for level designs…sweetness.

  • Zenith

    I wonder whats stopping him from making them?

  • Zaphos

    Wow — this is inspiring stuff! The entries I’ve read so far have been really thought provoking.

  • Ilia Chentsov

    Well, if, as they say, the ideas are dime a dozen, he’s now a bit below 20 cents!

  • contra

    “this is madness!”
    Not only does this guy have ALOT of ideas, but they’re actually good ones too. Very interesting and inspiring! Hope he keeps it up.

  • Smallfry

    This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while. It’s a great way to get people thinking about innovative gameplay ideas!

    Great job, Squidi!