MORSE is a game I created alongside Madison Stutzman for the 2019 GMTK 48 hour Game Jam. Maddie did most of the art in illustrator, where I focused on the direct development in Unity. This being our first ever jam, the crunch was incredibly tight- but we still managed to place #978 out of 2,626 entries, not too shabby for a first time!

The prompt of the Jam was "Just One," and we settled on the idea of controlling a spaceship with one button. Specifically, we wanted to put the player in situations where they would have to multitask, be it by fighting multiple opponents or moving and aiming at the same time, even though the controls only allow you to make one action at a time. This play between having to act quickly but being forced to act slowly is where the game really shined the most. 

In order to control the ship with just one button (the SPACEbar, to be precise), we created a system where the player rapidly taps the spacebar to tell the ship what they want to do. One tap means movement, meaning you can cover space quickly with rhythmic tap-wait-tap-wait motions. To shoot, tap the spacebar twice, which is further signified by the fact that you fire two bullets every shot. Finally, to turn the ship without moving, tap space three times quickly- a much more deliberate action. As an extra note, if you panic and press the spacebar more than three times in quick succession, the ship defaults to shooting.

We found that as people played the game, the clicking of the spacebar eerily mimicked morse code, thus providing the namesake.