A Whirlwind of Game Design

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a feature on the videogames design students were able to create in 24 hours. From conception to completion. The games are quite basic but it is fascinating what they are able to come up with in so little time. From the article: 'The teams' challenge was to collectively create a mobile-game masterpiece using a "mystery ingredient" -- random verbs and nouns -- to guide design.'"

Input

[Umbral Blot]

The real constraint with phone games is the input device, not the games themselves. Phone buttons are way too tiny to be easy to use, so games have to use only a couple of them, or be too hard to play. Also the tiny screen isnt very conductive either. What phones need is some kind of tilt sensitivity (for example), which would be easy to make games arround, and easy to interact with. Acceleration sensititivty might work as well, or possibly some game which uses the camera as an input device (i.e. you point it at differnt colored and shaped things to make the game react. Anther possibility is to use the audio input, but this could be annoying for the people arround you. While the games developed look nice, they still will all be a pain in the ass to play, and its not the developers' fault.