I’ve found myself during this first honeymoon phase of iPhone ownership wanting to touch it, rotate it and just generally do stuff with it all the time. Checking the weather, email , surfing the web, posting to twitter, reading my bloglines, mo-blogging to my personal blog etc…. are all really cool but I really want to frankly “play” with the thing a lot more. My interactions with the iPhone, while elegant and efficient, aren’t nearly playful enough for me. Other than scaling and scrolling through my photos and rotating my Safari window, I’m not getting enough wow factor from the available apps that can make use of this new tactile playground.
With this need to play I have been thinking about the following suite of ….we’ll call them games….for the iPhone.
Beach
One of my favorite things to do at the beach is to play in the sand with my kids. I love how the sand flows through my hands. How it sticks together and creates new shapes. I like to bury my feet in the sand and then feel the coolness as the sand protects them from the hot sun. I like to draw shapes with my fingers and write silly things to my wife.
Imagine an iPhone app that when you launched it you heard the sounds of the beach. Wind, waves, seagulls would all make up a rich soundtrack that would immerse you. Visually you would see a top down view of sand. Randomly maybe a crab would wonder by or maybe a rogue wave would wash up. When you placed your finger in the sand it would react in an organic matter. You could write in the sand. Push it around. Dig holes etc. When you were ready to move on you could rotate or shake the iPhone etch a sketch style to “reset” the sand.
Locks
Padlocks, combination locks, chain locks, finger print locks, weird locks you’ve never seen before, imagine them strung together in an endless journey to nowhere. My idea for this app is to essentially create a series of puzzles that utilize locks on doors. As you unlock a door it would open to reveal yet another door. Each lock would get progressively more complex starting from basic chain locks to mysterious rotating combinations. Most of the locks would need the user to tactically rotate a dial, drag a chain etc.
Pop
Who doesn’t enjoy popping bubble wrap? Incredible stress relief. I need an app on my iPhone that is an endless supply of bubble wrap. Small bubbles, big bubbles medium size bubbles, heck even random sized ones all mixed together. The best part is I can pop more than one bubble at once by using multiple fingers. Yes!!
Sabre
This one is pretty obvious and I would be shocked if someone hasn’t already done it but, we need an iPhone light sabre. If you haven’t played with Mac Sabre on your Macbook then you are missing out. I still get a kick out of it. Basically you take advantage of the accelerometer to trigger different light sabre sounds from Star Wars. Perfect for iPhone. You could even include a larger suite of Star Wars sound effects or sounds that you could trigger from the app as well.
Sprint
My and my boys back in the day used to put a hurtin on my Atari 2600 playing the Olympics game. To run faster than the other guy you had to beat the controller back and forth as fast as possible. It was for short sprints but also for longer distance runs. Some serious wrist training…which looking back seems really vulgar. Imagine an iPone app based on the same principal but using rapid gestures. I imagine a 3/4 top down view of an athlete that would run at the rate at which you gestured back and forth or up and down. Additionally you could use your two index fingers to “run” on the screen. Fun!
Spin
Have you ever a had time making a decision? Iny mini miny mo not working for you? Lost your magic eight ball? Why not give the wheel a spin to decide your fate? Imagine a good old fashioned wheel that you can spin, complete with that awesome clicking sound that slows down as the wheel slows and then makes that final click. The user could customize the wheel to make each section say whatever they want and then give it a spin by gesturing with their finger.
More apps to come I’m sure. Leave me a comment or holla at me if you like these ideas, think they are lame or you are an iPhone developer and want to hook up and make these a reality.
Locks has some serious potential replay value. And you could upgrade it every so often with new lock sets to keep them coming back for more.
Beach sounds interesting, though part of the challenge would be thinking up enough easter eggs (crab crawling across screen, buried treasure) or tools you could use to play in the sand (finger, metal detector, shovel, dynamite, etc) to keep it relevant.
Thanks for the comment Mike!
I also think it would be cool with Locks to introduce some type of rewards every so often as you progress…like cut scene style.
Beach I was thinking of as this sort of Zen thing but I totally agree that easter eggs would be cool. It would be nice to make it so that the user could either Zen out or use their metal detector etc the same way different people use the beach in real life.
If you develop “bubble wrap”, I’m going to trade in my blackberry.
Your iPhone locks with a single slide via the OS, right? What if you could replace it with a combination lock, the same solution every time but with cycling graphic presentations? This way, it’d be actually locking something.
What about a game of Simon Says? Pretty simple - four colors, but endless fun.
Or, for the XGames set, set up a finger skateboard game. You’ve got a pretty crazed community already built in for that one.
Good ideas!
Thanks Chris!
Yeah finger boarding would rock. I was thinking also about that or a break dancing game where you could draw gestures of use the accelerometer to make some one pop n lock or spin.
Know any objective c programmers we can make these?
That release of tension that you feel when a real bubble burst is something that can’t be replicated on a GUI, unless we start using forced feedback etc. It’s that tension release that makes it so satisfying.
Sad but true. My thought was that by being able to use multiple fingers to pop and that stress relieving popping sound my tide one over in between “real” popping sessions
Great minds think alike. I started working on the bubble wrap application shortly after the SDK was released and I now have a proof of concept. Check it out at the following link.
Awesome Phil!
I am working on prototyping some of these ideas in flash right now. Interested in teaming up?