pom

(made for the Highly Unproductive Game Jam)

Pom is a toy in which each possible frame has been individually hand-drawn.

The gameplay is ultra-simple, reducing the number of different states the game can have to 81.

Each of these 81 states has been hand-drawn in a small 5x4cm frame.

This toy is a proof of concept. The idea is to apply this principle to a slightly more complex game.

A snake game on a 3 by 3 grid would require ~2731 drawings for the core gameplay. I estimate that this would represent around 8 hours of drawing. Which is still very reasonable! (disclaimer : the attempt to count all the possibilities (below) has been done quickly and may miss some cases)

Unfortunately, a 3-by-3 snake game is of very limited interest...

Games that are more fun than a 3x3 snake but have a smaller number of possible different frames do exist! For example, A game like "Ball (game and watch)" would require less than 900 drawings! Obviously, you'll have to forget about displaying the score, unless you're prepared to multiply the number of drawings by 10,000.