Rule0:Don't Touch The Black

### "Rule0: Don't Touch The Black"
It is a game designed to communicate the idea of limited space. Its main purpose is to express this concept, so practically speaking, it may not offer much of traditional gameplay to players.

In addition to physical 'limited space', we also experience limited mental space. That is we have to comply with certain laws, certain political correctness. Some rules limit us. Even though you might find these rules absurd, you end up following them for various reasons.

This logic of "even if I find it ridiculous, I still do it" is very explicitly embodied in games. In the Mario game, coins fall out when Mario bumps his head into bricks. This sounds completely unrealistic but players in the game do not question the logic of this rule, they simply follow it.

From this perspective, players are actually within the rules of ‘limited space’ during gameplay. A pertinent issue arises: does it make sense for us to follow the rules of 'limited space'?

This is the main subject that this game seeks to discuss. In this game, players are told that they can't touch black. All players will comply with this rule. However, the action is meaningless in the game because there are no means for the players to counter it.

They can only die in the situation where the survival space is constantly being compressed both in a physical and mental sense due to the limited space. Moreover, when players die from touching the flying black cubes, they find out that they have also violated another, randomly AI-generated rule like "don't train your bread to make it tastier".

This emphasizes the absurdity of the rules, questioning the meaningfulness of our actions in limited space. All in all, I hope you can appreciate the game's message and have fun.

Off-topic remarks


The completion of this project was indeed quite brief; although I knew about the ludum dare event some time ago, I only came up with this idea at midday Beijing time on October 2nd, so essentially, the game was put together in less than a day.

This was not only my first time participating in ludum dare but also my first individual project, and obviously my art skills need improvement. To be honest, one of the main reasons for participating in this game jam was because I didn't feel like studying for my GRE anymore.

My exam was on October 15th, but I couldn't bring myself to review.

All in all, I hope you can appreciate the game's message and have fun.

Comments5

liwenxuan0825author2 Oct 2023, 22:02
The credit to the asset I've used will be given later after I wake up.I'm going to sleep know
Subsage
Subsage3 Oct 2023, 02:04
Movement feels a little to slow, but it's otherwise a good idea. Nice work for the short time you had :)
liwenxuan0825author3 Oct 2023, 16:53

Credit Section


Music and Sound Effects


Music:


Lurking Evil by Darren Curtis | https://www.darrencurtismusic.com/

Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Sound Effects

Sound Effect from Pixabay

Sound Effect from Pixabay

Sound Effect by UNIVERSFIELD from Pixabay

Sound Effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com

Plugins


Text Animator from https://www.febucci.com/text-animator-unity/

You can find it on Unity Asset Store

Code


All by Me with the help of Copilot and ChatGPT.

Text


The absurd rules are generated by ChatGPT using a certain prompt.

Graphics


All by Me. No textures used in the game.
josep93
josep933 Oct 2023, 17:27
The gameplay of the game is quite curious.
Characters do not look very good when they appear over the black area.
The music matches the presentation of the game quite well.
xzxvg11 Oct 2023, 01:02
Impressive gameplay, and it was until I'd been playing for about 5 minutes that I realized the maze of white word at the beginning wasn't an untouchable area
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