Most anybody who has undertaken any form of study will recognise the quandary I faced last night: the over-specific assignment brief.

I was asked to pitch an “interactive space (game/story or experiential) where movement is exploited to create a rich, engaging user experience”. On top of this I was tied to a very prescriptive writing form and given three completely arbitrary and pointless themes to choose from: ‘The Mistake’, ‘Above and Beyond’, and ‘Gravity’.

I chose the former, as it seemed the most vague, and resolved to construct an experience that I felt had worth outside the questionable constraints of the assignment. The idea I pitched not only exploits movement but exploits an aspect of human movement most of us understand instinctively – the reassuring touch of another human hand.

The assignment was quite long and involved flowcharts and director’s statements and such, but I’ve edited it for length and reproduced it below. I’m very interested in finding out whether any of you fine readers would play a game the likes of which I have conceived.

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OVERVIEW

The Mistake is a hand-holding game. Users play the role of a person who has made a mistake in their romantic relationship, with the result that their partner is upset with them. The interactive space is dominated by two hands, one belonging to the player character and the other to their partner. By interpreting audio and visual cues as well as the subtle movements of the partner hand, it is the player’s objective to carefully and sensitively reverse the effect of their mistake by moving their own hand to affect reassuring hand-holding.

Next to faces, hands are the most physically expressive part of a human body, and in The Mistake users will tap into their instinctual knowledge of emotive body-movement to gauge the partner’s mood and needs. Of course owing to the lack of tactile feedback, movement in this game is exaggerated to make it easy for the player to translate the movement into a meaningful representation of the partner’s mood. For example, grabbing too firmly or too soon may result in reluctance, characterised by a loosening of the partner’s grip. Extreme ill-attention may result in the partner withdrawing their hand entirely, meaning the player must start again. The player’s idea of progress is helped along by musical and visual cues as well as progress bars.

The narrative in this game is not concerned with the nature of the mistake or the spoken dialogue between characters. The user is not even informed that a mistake has been made, but works it out on their own by interpreting the partner’s movement. The story plays out via the movement of the hands of two lovers who are expressing their feelings through the medium of hand-holding. This is a single-player game.

EXPLANATION

This interactive experience will require a multi-touch display, such as a tablet. Interaction is accomplished by touching the screen with the number of digits you wish to use. For ease of use, two hands may be used at once, i.e. three fingers from one hand and one from the other will result in the user hand implementing four fingers.

At the beginning of the game the two hands will not be touching at all. Touching the screen will move one of the user fingers, and the user will need to drag around to manipulate the finger. Progress is measured by two on-screen bars, one showing the overall progress to completion and one displaying the partner’s tension. When the first contact is made between fingers the tension will raise rapidly and the user will have to back off, but eventually the partner will be calmed, allowing the user to execute longer and more complex gestures, and eventually the partner hand will actively interact with the user in a two-way dialogue. In this scenario the user will have to not only manipulate the partner hand but will also have to identify and be receptive to the partner hand’s movement to progress. There will be a degree of randomization to ensure the user cannot ‘learn’ the game too easily. There will be several variants of the game to play, in that switch up aspects such as the partner’s initial grumpiness, specific actions that the partner wants employed, etc.

Although there are progress bars, the user will not be successful unless they pay strict attention to the movement of the partner hand, as doing so will let them know which movements to initiate in order to lower the tension and raise the progress. The movement of the partner hand may also indicate which interactions should not be attempted or are unwelcome.

Movements of the partner hand include:

The offering of one or more specific fingers for nuzzling or grasping.

The opening of the fingers to allow access to the palm.

The withdrawing of the hand, indicating dangerously high tension.

The turning-over of the hand.

The grabbing and trapping of a user finger.

Twitching to indicate ticklish areas.

Where they may not be self-evident the meaning of partner hand gestures will be backed up with audio and visual cues. For example a negative user action may result in the slowing of music and the desaturation of the background, in addition to the increase of the tension scale or lowering of the progress scale.

The user can interact directly with the partner hand by touching it, but specific gestures can also instigate specific actions. For example:

Grabbing and trapping fingers

Tickling

Pinching

Interlocking fingers

Withdrawing

Treatment (a narrative example of a typical game play-through)

Two hands are seen side by side, the backs facing each other. They are moving slightly and rhythmically, as though their owners are walking but purposefully leaving their hands by their sides. There are muffled and indistinct outdoors sounds in the background – talking, wind, water, traffic – it could be almost anything. The visuals beyond the hands are equally ambiguous, a mix of blurry colour.

The user extends one finger to the partner hand and brushes it gently. The partner’s tension rises sharply and the hand recoils slightly. The user withdraws their finger and waits. As the partner’s tension eases the partner hand moves a little closer to the user. Deciding to be prudent, the user extends a single finger again, this time allowing it to rest against the partner hand, testing the waters. The tension rises a little and the partner hand visibly tenses, but then relaxes and allows the user finger to rest there. The background becomes a little brighter and a tune begins to play softly.

The partner hand moves outward a little, seeming to offer the inside of the hand. The user moves their finger to hook the partner index finger. Emboldened by their progress, the user moves in two more fingers and attempts to grasp the partner hand. The background tune stops and is replaced by the sound of wind, while the background is desaturated and the partner hand stops moving. The user has been too forthright. Realising this, the user withdraws back to the single finger, tapping by way of apology. Thankfully the user cottoned on before the partner’s tension rose.

After a minute or two of playful experimentation, the partner hand is relaxed and interacting with the user hand. After interlinking some fingers the partner hand opens up its palm and the user grasps it fully. The user has completed this variant of the game.

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To my mind, in this day and age where games with high concepts and low overheads are commonplace, it’s a shame more experiences don’t explore the extraordinary of the everyday. There is every bit as much nuance and excitment in the art of hand-holding as there is in shooting terrorists, saving a fictional galaxy or exploring an abandoned mine shaft, and I think the mechanics of experiences like this outght to be explored (even if it’s by people with a little more gameplay-sense than yours truly).

What do you think? Hit up the comments below.