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Players: The game is designed for one player only, in order to maintain a frantic action pace. The player takes the role of a drunken college student who has woken up far from his dorm room and needs to make his way back before passing out again.

Entities: The player encounters several computer controlled enemies during his journey. Unicyclists roam the campus and if the player contacts them, his controls are reversed. Wiffle bat swingers will attack the player, rotating his controls 90 degrees to the left or right. Campus Safety officers will capture the player, ending his life. Lonesome people will delay the player with inane conversation.

Look and Feel: The game screen consists of a view of the stretch of campus between the player and his dorm room, consisting mostly of grass and sidewalks. The dorm room is somewhere off the top edge of the screen, so as the player moves forward the view will scroll up along with him.

Objectives: The player’s goal is to traverse the map and reach the dorm room at the end. To do so, he must be careful not to run into the obstacles between his starting point and the room.

Start Up: When the game first loads the player must hit ‘enter’ to begin. The game will then start with the player at some point on the campus far from his dorm room. Each subsequent level will also start the player off here.

Gameplay: The player must move his character up the map to his room. As the game is played, the player’s wakefulness meter is always dropping, indicating an imminent return to unconsciousness. The player must reach the dorm room before the meter runs out or he loses. Along the way to the room a variety of foes are encountered. Some, like the unicycle riders, are simple obstacles that the player must avoid hitting. Others, like Campus Security, will actively hunt the player. Being touched by an enemy causes different effects depending on the type of enemy. Unicycle riders and whiffle-bat wielders will disorient the player, causing the keyboard controls to reassign themselves unpredictably. Lonely people will begin conversations (plunging our hapless drunkard into a “painfully boring and utterly pointless conversation simulator” mini-game) that sap valuable time if the player cannot escape from them. Campus Security will drag the player away, causing him to lose a life. The player has one weapon to use against his enemies. By vomiting, the player can create a small safe area that the player’s foes can not enter. However, the player only has so much vomit in his stomach, and so this weapon’s uses are limited. Vomiting has the side effect of raising the wakefulness meter slightly, and so can also be useful to earn a few more seconds in the rush to the dorm room. Mudd’s lawnphobic sprinklers also make an appearance in this game. If the player gets sprayed by the sprinkler, he will receive a one-time increase in wakefulness. Unfortunately, Mudd’s sprinklers never spray on to the relatively safe lawns, but instead, spray only on to the perilous sidewalks.

Interface: The interface to The Hobbler is fairly simple. The spacebar can be used to launch the vomit attack. The arrow keys are used to move the character left, right, up, or down in the level. Each keystroke corresponds to one step of movement. Note that when the player has been hit by a disorienting attack these keys may not be mapped out logically, but the four arrow keys will always be the keys used to move the players. A disorienting attack will not, for example, make the ‘e’ key into the new up button. It might instead reverse the left and right arrows’ function. The game window itself holds the level screen as well as a count of how much sobriety and vomit the player has left.

Level Design: The player continues to new levels each time he successfully returns to his dorm room. As he continues to party hardier, he must return with less time on his drunkenness meter, and navigate through more enemies. The enemies may become more numerous, aggressive, or speedy.

Proposed Prototype: Represent a field in which the player critter is able to move, with begin and end conditions from one side of the level to the other. Include enemies that end the game and mutate the control scheme.

-- DavidCoyne - 11 Sep 2004