Epic waste of time vol. 1: One Button Defeat

There are roads you go down in the creative process which end up unravelling and leading you to the wrong side of nowhere. I thought it might be interesting to share some of these design ideas, prototypes, images and assets to show some of the hidden work that goes into independent games development. And so I present volume one, the lost company branding known as One Button Defeat.

Note that some of these images can be biggified via the usual method of clicking. Those that don’t respond to clicking don’t have larger versions.

I’ve already talked in great lengths about the horrifically elongated and extruded process I went through to come up with the new company name and branding, Pixels on Toast. But I had forgotten that I had spent quite a bit of time on some of the front runner candidate names in exploring logos and images I could use. One of these names was One Button Defeat.

The name itself comes from some late night gaming sessions with a good friend of mine. He was quite skilled and practiced with fighting games, the kind of person who learns all the special moves for all the characters and can pull them off with alarming regularity. In stark contrast, I am a complete idiot when it comes to fighting games. Whenever we played Street Fighter 2, my favourite luddite ploy was to choose E. Honda, the big boned sumo wrestler from Japan. And then when my finely nuanced friend came pirouetting near, I would activate the Hundred Hand Slap special move by mashing the punch button repeatedly. And I would use only this move, pressing only that button. Victories were rare, but when they came, I could claim a “One Button Defeat!” to add vinegar to fresh wounds. 

On to the visual treatment. First I worked on a button design, created using layers and layer effects in Photoshop. The glyph on the button is a slightly grisly play on the 1UP button found on arcade machines, with the player’s head detached from the body and lying on the floor. I liked the way it seemed initially innocuous until you realise what it actually is. The button itself is based on classic arcade machine designs. The first attempt to produce the button image was a render, but it was hard to get the lighting exactly as I wanted it, and in fact it turned out to be much easier to control results in Photoshop.

Moving on from here, I started to look at splash screens, and experimented with taking the idea to its natural conclusion, ramping up the gory factor.

Too much? Maybe. I would definitely have problems using this logo with family friendly games such as Food Run. But maybe I could use it for a hardcore shooter game on XBLA or PSN.

Next I moved on to iPhone sized versions, and more age friendly treatments.

I also experimented with changing out the button decal for a bomb.

And another variation without decal. I was also thinking that the word “defeat” may be too negative, so I tried to change it to “victory”. Thinking back at this now, I don’t think this is necessary, but it was worth trying.

Finally, I had been inspired when watching the end credits of Blackadder, the third series set in the Regency period. I put this together in the style of theatre posters of the time. I still quite like this treatment.

So why did I end up rejecting One Button Defeat? Well it seemed like too much of an in-joke. And at the time I wasn’t sure about the word “defeat”, and didn’t like the chest beating qualities of the word “victory” either. Add to this that although I liked the player’s head being detached in the button decal, I was a little worried about how appropriate it was for a family audience. If I were in the business of making games solely for core gamers, this name probably would have been higher in my thoughts.

The search continued.