Slower Speed of Light in Games

Posted by marbs on Oct. 29, 2012, 7:25 p.m.

Wouldn't it be cool to see the effects of special relativity very visibly by lowering the speed of light? Well now you can by playing this game!

Developed by MIT Game Lab, you can download A Slower Speed of Light here.

The aim of the game is simple: collect 100 orbs. With each orb you collect, the speed of light is lowered. Things start getting a bit psychedelic when you have upwards of 80 orbs, due to the Doppler effect shifting colour hues, and warped models from length contraction.

Another game employing this same idea is Velocity Raptor. I found velocity raptor a lot more informative, plus it takes you through the effects of special relativity one step at a time. The puzzles are a lot harder though. I got up to level 31.

To finish, it seems that Frog Fractions didn't get much love in my last blog, perhaps because I didn't sell it too well. Let me try again!

In Frog Fractions, you play as a frog who eats bugs and collects fruit. Use fruit to buy upgrades. Upgrade your lily pad to a turtle, and swim underwater to find a stash of fruit. Use all that fruit to upgrade you turtle to a dragon, and then attach a warp drive. Now you can fly your frog on your dragon through space to combat the bugs in asteroids on the way to Mars! But oh no, you get taken to court on Mars, and sentenced to prison. You manage to escape from prison, swimming through the underwater caves while listening to the history of boxing. Finally, you find an old space ship, and play a text adventure to set up the targeting computer and put goo in the sleeping pod. You can at last fly back home, where you find yourself president of the world, and in charge of the economy. To become rich, you can print as much money as you like in order to aid in your bug porn business.

That is Frog Fractions. I apologise that I had to ruin the whole story.

Comments

LAR Games 11 years, 5 months ago

Interesting idea. Slowing down the speed of light.. Never heard of a game doing that before.

I played the first game and thought it was.. interesting. Makes you wonder what everything would look like if you were able to stop time.

Kamira 11 years, 5 months ago

Frog Fractions was awesome.

Praying Mantis 11 years, 5 months ago

I'm doing General Relativity in Physics right now, and I have got to show this brilliance to my teacher :D