This is a game i started working on for a Adelaide Uni Game Development Club Game Jam. The theme for the game jam was “Create your own path.” I came up with the idea that rather then creating the game to run on a computer that instead i should run it off a microprocessor and use LED’s as the main display and switches for input.

The Idea

My original idea was to create a skill tester based game that used a row of 8 dual colour LED’s as the output display. Using one colour to represent a wall or obstacle that you would loose health if it was run into, another colour to represent the character moving in my current plot idea this is a robot. and then a mixture of both colours to represent the normal pathway and no light to represent a door to the next level. So the idea was when the game started the character would continuously move in one direction wrapping around back to the other side of the display if it went off one edge and getting the player to control the character to stop it from hitting the wall or obstacles using a left and right button. When the character was at a door point the idea is to press the up or down button to move to a different level and depending on which way you went up or down the next level may be harder then the last or the character may speed it’s movement up. If the up or down button was pressed while not on a door the character will run into the other wall and loose more health.

The Plot

A vital Piece of inelegance has been left on a collapsing alien space ship the only way to rescue it is by guiding a old faulty robot through a path to guide it out of a ship. Unfortunately the robot is old and stupid and his communication system is equally as old and out of date. Upon telling the robot to start moving he will continue to move in that direction until told otherwise even if this involves running into objects such as walls. You must guide the robot on a path up through a series of paths and faulty elevators that may drop it anywhere. As the robot moves further out of the ship his path will become harder to navigate and the robot will see things that will spook it causing it to move faster.

The Hardware

My current hardware list includes a

• ATMEGA8515L (Because i had one sitting around at home)
• 8 Dual Colour LED’s (Red and Green)
• 1 7 segment display (to display health)
• 4 push button switches
• Powered by 2 AA batteries

Future Plans

Due to time i haven’t reached most of my current plans but one idea i did have was to replace the 7 segment display with a 2×20 character display so i could display more info about the surrounds and turn the game into a rpg.