Circuits

While sitting in math class, I started writing a way for me to understand how computers can use nothing but true/false statements and do almost anything. While doing basic diagrams I unintentionally came up with an ingenious idea for a game; a game where not only you are forced to go through hundreds of challenges, but also a game that easily explains how a computer can do so much while only turning on and off power. I call this game: Circuits.

Circuits is a game where you are given 2 or more power options that go through a series of "gates" and you have to guess what the output is. In the example above, the Green squares would resemble a power on output, the yellow inputs would resemble a gate where if one input is true and one input is false, then the output would be true. The black box resembles an unknown.

Given the facts above, you know the black box would equal false (because one input to the yellow box is true and the other input is also true, but the yellow box needs to have one false input and one true input). This all seems simple and boring, but imagin this on a scale with hundreds of boxes and multiple outputs. Here is a sketch from my journal of game ideas:

As you can see here, the game has many gates and many outputs throughout the level (ignore the purple/white boxes, the scan was a little awkward). Also, you can see how when all added up together, you can create binary messages within the game. I plan to use this game as a simple way to teach computer science to all ages. In the first challenge, it wasn't difficult at all, but in the second one, you see the potential of possibly having entire strings of code. The possibilities are endless.

We will most likely build this game in GameMaker Professional, where we can have the option of exporting it into a mobile app, as well as a game that works on all three major operating systems (Windows, OSX, Ubuntu/Linux)