Calling Double Fine Happy Action Theater (DFHAT) a game might not marry well with many people's definition of what a game is. A game usually has clearly stated goals and strictly defined rules that describe how you could fail to reach those goals. In DFHAT, on the other hand, it's literally impossible to either win or fail in any of 18 myraid scenes, which each use the Kinect 3D camera to transform your living room in various ways.

Double Fine Happy Action Theater xbox Release Date: Now

Now MSRP: $10 Official site

One moment you're in a room filled to the brim with balloons, swatting and popping in three dimensions. The next you're set ablaze as the room fills up with lava. The next you're stomping around a miniature black-and-white city, destroying buildings Godzilla style. After that you might be swimming around in an aquarium, avoiding worm-filled hooks that draw you off the screen; or scattering flocks of pigeons that annoyingly roost on your furniture; or shivering in place as the scene fills with snow.

You're not given any stated directions in how to act in any of these scenes, and only a few—like simplified, movement controlled versions of Breakout and Galaga—even have an explicit scoring mechanism. You simply interact with the scenes with no imposed restrictions or apparent purpose other than to see what happens. In this way it's less a game and more an augmented reality playground that shows off some of the most inventive uses for the Kinect I've yet seen.

I talked Double Fine Lead Technical Artist Drew Skillman about the specific challenges in designing a title with such a unique sensibility.

What advice would you give other developers trying to make a game where no instructions are necessary?

There were certainly some lessons we learned trying to hit that balance: a game that's fun to play, but doesn't actually require the player to perform any specific actions. One of the most important was trying to make the world as responsive as possible. Since the player doesn't know what's possible, it can be frustrating if we set up the expectation for an action to work and then it fails. For this type of situation we would often pair a well known scenario (room filled with balloons/ball pit/hot lava), and then combine it with physically based interactions. In fact the more we relied on physics, the more natural various actions became.

For example, we didn't have to do anything special to support jumping into a ball pit off your couch. It just so happens that when people see a ball pit—they instinctively know the "right" thing to do. Jump into it!

Does such a philosophy [of not including instructions] limit how complex you can make the experience?

I don't actually think it did for us. Our limitations were more self-imposed because we wanted to make lots of small experiences rather than getting caught up in just a handful. If, say, Microsoft had decided to give us a few months to focus on just one of our activities, then I think we could have added all kinds of complexity. Over time the player would discover it just by trial and error—and as long as the trial and error process is rewarding—that would still create a compelling experience.

Are there any worries about selling a "game" with no explicit goals except to mess about and have a good time? Are you worried some players won't grok the concept?

This is definitely a point we've tried to drive home—that there's no way to lose, there are no fixed goals, and there's nothing you're required to do. At first we were concerned people wouldn't get it, but seeing the early play tests really encouraged us. Folks were enjoying themselves, and those who wanted a more game-like experience could make their own games out of it using their imaginations.

I also think it helps us that we're shipping with 18 full activities and at the $10 price point. That's about 50 cents an activity! We hope that's an additional incentive for people to relax and just enjoy themselves without worrying about traditional game conventions.

I know you pushed the Kinect hardware/software a bit by implementing tracking for up to six people. Is there anything you wanted to do but the Kinect just couldn't handle it?

Unfortunately the answer to this question is lots of stuff! The first limitation that comes to mind is how coarse the depth is. When you look at it directly, you'll see that background pixels are unpredictably shaking all over the place and that the edges of players are constantly appearing and disappearing. Even with a lot of graphics effort, we still haven't been able to completely stabilize those artifacts.

A host of our early ideas were designed without that limitation in mind and had to be scrapped. A specific example is fog which is one of the classic visual techniques for separating foreground and background in games. Because of the depth noise, we had to throw it out which is a shame because it would have been a spectacular addition to our atmospheric activities like "Blizzard."

Were there any activities you had planned that were just too "out there" to include after testing/development?

[Laughs] Indeed. There were actually a series of ideas we had where the game would detect how many people were in the room, and then change its behavior when you were by yourself. This naturally evolved into some spooky brainstorming sessions. For example, if you're by yourself and you say Bloody Mary 13 times well you get the idea. But as you can imagine that one didn't make the final cut.

What's your favorite activity in the game, and why?

My favorite is probably "Clone-o-Matic" right now. In that activity 3D snapshots of the scene are composited together, allowing players to swap heads, composite multiple limbs on their body, and create other hilarious and bizarre images. Over the last year of development we've had the opportunity to see lots of different people play that one, and I'm continually surprised at the ridiculous compositions people come up with. Making an experience that people can approach both as game, as well as an interactive piece of art, has been hugely rewarding.