PigKeys

Overview

This project is a 2D platformer built around the idea of breaking input conventions in digital games. 

In most platformers, control is treated as stable, natural, and always available. Our game challenges that assumption. Here, control is not permanent. It is a scarce resource that can be exhausted and rewritten by the system.

At the beginning of the game, the player uses A, D and W as their key bindings. But as the game progresses, that bindings are slowly taken away. Core inputs such as movement and jump have limited durability. Repeated use consumes that durability. When a key reaches its threshold, the game presents the player with a three-choice system to replace the key bindings. As a result, control stops being a neutral tool and becomes a contested system. The player is not simply mastering movement. They are being forced to adapt to a control structure that is continuously rewritten by external authority.

The game uses this mechanical structure as a political metaphor. What feels natural in how we act is often not natural. It is the result of long-term conditioning, repeated training, and systems of control that become invisible precisely because they are normalized.

Team:

Jazer Li, Peizhang Chen, Candy Li, Yue Kou, Yanjun Liu, Zachery Huang