I went back to Hail Caesar, the game I entered in the YoYo Ancient Civilisation Competition over the weekend and discovered a terrible bug – hit the spacebar and the whole distraction apparatus (the spinning eye, the alpha plane etc.) vanished. No one who had played seems to have noticed, for which I will thank the fact that it is entirely mouse control throughout, so players are unlikely to strike the keyboard. And it is sitting firmly at 61 out of the 120 odd games, which makes it firmly average. I think it is a better game than that, but hey, the way people approach competition games is odd. Or maybe it is a decidedly average game, and the voters at YoYo are wise.

I wish I was an animator, however, as I think there are real possibilities in the expose/distract/reveal mechanic that sits here that could make it a much more interesting visual experience. I see a sci-fi version in my minds eye, with scrolling computer text and malfunctioning OS as the distractions. Maybe too tempting to do a Matrix, but there are real possibilities. And aliens in place of the Roman citizens. Which won't make sense to anyone who hasn't played the game.

And I finished the game that Stack5 was a part of, but I don't think I have the nerve to post it here. It is an experiement that I think works when it shouldn't according to conventional design wisdom – 3 separate games that intrude on each other and are played simultaneously. There is Stack5 on the left, a lane swapping driving game on the right, and a Pong variant played across the two playfields.