GDC 10: B.U.T.T.O.N., by Copenhagen Game Collective

Each year, Gamma entrants are asked to make games under certain constraints. This year, all Gamma4 entries must be controlled with a single button. I plan to write up my impressions of all six Gamma4 games.

“Think of a color,” the game says. “Tell it to no one.”

We do.

“Take five steps back.”

We do.

After a brief countdown, we run toward the buttons.

“Everyone loses except the fourth person to press their button,” the game says. Confused, excited, and having just jogged a short distance, I panic and press my button immediately, as do two of the other players. As promised, only the fourth player wins.

This is B.U.T.T.O.N. (Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally Okay Now), the Copenhagen Game Collective’s entry in to Gamma4.

You can read my impressions (and the color I was thinking of) after the jump.

Blue.

B.U.T.T.O.N. doesn’t really have any serious point or reward systems, or even any consistent rules: it’s simply about getting confused, having fun, and not taking things terribly seriously. I’d call it a party game, if that descriptor didn’t conjure memories of godawful minigames and generally uninteresting trivia questions.

Nothing about B.U.T.T.O.N. is consistent. Sometimes, you’ll have to take four steps away from the controller before running toward it. Sometimes, you’ll have to sit. Sometimes, the instructions will be in Danish. B.U.T.T.O.N. has no gameplay beyond its win conditions, and those conditions constantly change.

Playing B.U.T.T.O.N. is like participating in a real-life WarioWare microgame, in many ways. You never know what you’ll be doing, or which instructions to trust (as far as I can tell, the “think of a color” instruction served only to distract and confuse), or how you’re even supposed to win.

Surprisingly, the experience never felt frustrating: the constant atmosphere of confusion and randomness becomes the experience in and of itself, rather than a means of winning. I never actually won a single round of B.U.T.T.O.N., but I also never felt remotely bad when I lost. The inconsistent, weird, occasionally Danish journey was more important than the destination.

B.U.T.T.O.N. clearly isn’t the sort of game you’d want to play for more than an hour, but hey: the game took the Copenhagen Game Collective less than a week to make. As far as wacky, disposable, socially-oriented games go, there’s really not much to complain about here.

The game is not currently available for download but will probably go up sometime after GDC.