Canabalt: Taking a Base Mechanic to the Limit!

Run for your life!  That’s the Core Experience delivered by Adam Atomic and Danny B’s hit browser game, Canabalt.  Created for the Experimental Gameplay Project, Canabalt was designed to use only one button.  That’s right, only one button.  Our intrepid survivor runs automatically to the right of screen, while the player presses a button each time they want to jump.  By dashing over buildings and avoiding obstacles, the player runs and runs and runs as birds leap off the rooftops and military ships fly overhead.  The game really is a thrill.

Canabalt was an absolute breakout hit in the indie game world, so what can other developers learn from it?  How can we apply the principles that made Canabalt so popular to our own games?  Why, by breaking out our old friend, the Game Design Canvas!

Breaking it Down

As we said, the Core Experience of Canabalt is to make the player feel like they’re running for their life.  Games that achieve their Core Experience well are the ones that we dream of and latch onto, and so the trick is to understand exactly how they did it.

Careful choice (and elimination) of Base Mechanics. To begin, you’ll notice that in Canabalt, the player’s character runs automatically.  There is no Base Mechanic for making the character move forward; that was purposely left out.  The effect?  A sense of urgency, a feeling that you have little control.  He’s going to run right into that wall in just a moment unless you do something!  This simple subtraction of control is a beautiful example of design through simplicity.  By causing the avatar to move automatically, the player becomes panicked from the first second the game is being played. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »