I Made a 1D Game 🎮 

Some people were asking why the 3D glasses store page was gone, so I'll explain here. This video only blew up after I made my 4D Minecraft video, so I never sold many 3D glasses. I decided to repurpose them to make 4D glasses, which are also unavailable at the moment. If/when the 4D glasses become available, you will be able to use them just like regular 3D glasses, but you probably won't be able to get them for the same price.

Without the 2d display, This is a horror game.

Living in a 2D world is terrifying

This game is honestly terrifying, there is no sound when you detect an enemy, so it stares at you deeply into your soul.

This game has so much horror potential lmao, the enemies have jumpscared me more than I would admit

A 1D game that looks like a 3D one whilst being in a 2D world and that needs 3D glasses to give a better 2D effect.

After seeing the enemy, this would make a perfect horror game.

Your "barcode" display -- stretching out the 1-D line so we can see it -- is exactly what I described in a short story I wrote some years ago. It was the perception of an uploaded brain that got put into a Flatland world. I had the fog too, but that's straight out of the original Flatland book.

how do you manage to make a big stretched colored line look so terrifying, i keep having heart attacks every time the enemies pop up

The rendering technology is the exact same as that of the old raycasting games from the late 80s/early 90s The difference is that this game does not attempt to create the illusion of a 3D world. This game could be used as a demonstration of how the old raycasting games actually work under the hood

Playing without the 2D display, it took me quite a while to realize that the enemies did _not_ in fact have insane health, but several of them had stacked and obstructed my view of the others. A very visceral difference to other displays! I even tried the 3D anaglyph and could eventually read it even without glasses! Very fun concept.

The fog definitely makes it look like a 3d game. Even if it's not being rendered in 3d it really looks like it is.

Honestly, the fact that it's so navigable does a lot to explain why the first rudimentary eyes managed to evolve in the first place.

This could be made into a very, very scary horror game

i just want to say that the enemy design in this game is downright horrifying. just a giant pair of eyes coming right at you. 10/10, won't sleep tonight.

I played a 1D arcade game before! It was called Line Wobbler. The display was a vertical line of multicolor LED lights, where you would play as a white dot that has to get from the bottom to the top. You could move up or down and you shake the joystick to block red enemies

This is super fascinating. As someone with no depth perception (as only one of my eyes works at any given time), I find your game pretty interesting. I assume my perspective on it, being one dimension down from my natural vision, is similar to how a typical person would perceive a "3D" game. The shadows help a LOT. If there were no shadows, it would be like me walking around in a perfectly lit room 😂 I would walk into *everything*.

great idea, I was thinking about how to approach a 1D game, and this is definitely a good way to do it!

this is honestly terrifying.... wondering around in the dark, going around a corner, and seeing the pink thing with those horrid stretched eyes, i might not sleep tonight, but great game lol

The backrooms walls, the uncanny feeling of being pursued, the unsettling 1d view and the creepy stretched monsters makes this a horror game with much potential. No noise jumpscares are scary but maybe you could add some neutral noise that suddenly disappears when a monster is detected or the other way around (noise when seeing monster). It shouldn't be difficult to program. Nice game, looking forward to version 2.0!

I actually came across your game online a few months ago after thinking about this concept myself. So interesting to see that there actually is a video about its development!

Interesting game. At the end it is a matter of perspective if your game is 1D, 2D or whatever. There are also games that claim to be 4D by allowing your to play with time or use some non-euclidean geometry. One might say that the only thing that matters is how many axes you can control. In Super Mario Bros or A Link to the Past you can ultimately move up/down or left and right. In that sense an endless runner like like that dinosaur chrome game could be considered 1D, because you can only jump and therefore only control one axis.

playing this with just the 1d view is a horror game.

Super cool idea, reminiscent of the flatland novel! Would you make a level pack inspired by that story? That is, with dialogues, a plot, and some 3D sphere passing throug the plane?

love the concept, love the way it is implemented! single comment, dude please tweak the steering speed and add some weird ass texturing and the lines much thinner, maybe by violating the concept - add some 3d cs2 style fog lol would love to play if such a game was an app with some captivating sorta cryptic subtitles and eerie music, kudos much!

A lot of the ideas here were covered in Edwin Abbott's "Flatland" (1884). For example, he talks about how fog is crucial for life in Flatland, to assess distance, and how inhabitants in dry regions have it so much harder. Well worth a read (freely available, only a couple of hours to read).

the enemies make me horrified. i don’t know what it is, the way they stand out, or the endless eyes looking at you, but it’s downright scary

I love the idea behind this game, I think that this would make a really cool horror game especially if 3D enemies that could pop in and out of existence were introduced.

THANK YOU, omg ive been waiting for someone to actually understand how vision and depth and all that actually work in relation to dimensionality

Rhythm games are 1D games. The note (or group of notes) come from afar until they hit the 0 coordinate and the player must press the correct button (or combination of buttons). The notes being separated instead of gobbled together into a single object/color is just for player convenience. You can make a pure 1D rhythm game where players must combine colors to hit chords, or numbers. Have the player have the numbers 1, 2, and 4, and have they hit numbers as they come. You can have numbers from 1 to 7 for the player to hit the right key combo

i think i'd call this a "first person 2d game" rather than a 1d game. you can still move in 2 dimensions just like a normal 2d game, its only the player perspective which is different. as evidenced by the fact that you can display the exact same world in a top-down display to make it like a normal 2d game.

Now I'm imagining how Mario goes through his worlds in the 2D games and how he just sees a stack of colored pixels with no width. That would be hell.

Love the vibe of this. I think this has some serious potential

I really want to argue that by increasing the 'thickness' of the 1d world, you've basically created fake 3d but this inadvertently raises the question of how thick is a 1d world? 1 pixel? 1 atom? 1 what? Beautiful representation nonetheless.

It's a pretty interesting game, though the controls are a bit awkward. I can see why you didn't go with keyboard-and-mouse, since the mouse is a 2D input, but the inability to strafe makes the game feel clumsy to play, especially with the momentum the character has when moving or even turning. Adding strafing would make it easier to move around accurately, and also help with depth perception.

After the procedure you're either left with "I can't tell if I'm dead", or "It sure is yellow out here today!" * Gasp! * "Something moved somewhere . . ." - Sam O'Nella

Had this idea before and awesome you actually did it!! Love it! 💜

Fun fact, most 2D games aren't actually 2D. They are actually 3D due to the z-index(aka layering), so your 1D game is actually true 2D, due to layering again. So it is almost impossible to make a 1D game unless you remove layering and allow everything to Z fight with each other.

I played it a bit, it definitely feels like a maze level in a normal "3D" rpg. In fact, the hardest part is that all the walls look the same and the character has tank controls.

Entertaining and educational video. I learned a lot about dimensions, programming, and had fun messing around with the game :)

7:30 WTF THIS IS TERRIFYING

this is awesome! now I know how flatland characters feel

Hi @Mashpoe, great work! Somehow you came to the same concept of a game (or experience) as I did last year. For me, I created a flatland kind of experience in VR (to give people the stereoscopic depth cues from the 2nd dimension). What is funny is that the reason I created my version was to illustrate to people that we do not truly experience our 3D world to the fullest. In the end, we are very much limited by our 2D view (with depth cues from the 3D dimension). A true 3D view would offer us the ability to see objects from all sides, all at once, in and out (here the 2D equivalent would be a 2D Birdseye/topdown game). Because this is very weird to imagine, I thought I would scale it down by 1 dimension to something that we do know. One thing that I did with it (given my background in perceptual neuroscience), was I asked people to judge what kind of shapes they were dealing with (which is surprisingly manageable). A cool next step I was thinking of, is to see if people can discern 3D shapes passing through the 2D plane (which you then perceive in 1D). For example, a ball moving through the flatland plane would look like a curved line first expanding and then contracting and disappearing. I am convinced this will help us to better grasp what a 4D object would look like (a hypersphere moving through our 3D plane would look like a ball floating in the air, growing, making contact with the ground, shrinking, and disappearing in the air again). It is amazing that even with wildly different motivations you came to a project very similar to mine, though I have to admit, yours is way better (and a lot less barebones)! Anyway just wanted to share, and if you are ever interested in talking about the philosophy of 1d, 2d, & 3d perception, I feel free to get in contact.

bro your game is actually amazing... If you put the 2d preview off you get a scary sensation and its so cool!

The only reason I won't play this is the enemies, they legitimately look terryfying

great game! i did the first speedrun of this game. i beat level 10 without the 2d display in 12:50

You really have expanded my understanding of this world

Very cool, I saw a video animation about this kind of thing but I thought there weren't enough 1D examples. Now I get to interact with it!

i would call this a horror game by the way the enemies just sprint at you, and that small door of reaction time, mixed with how dark the room is, its like a jumpscare

How the hell does a 1d maze with lines for gameplay and funny looking lines for enemies make a better horror game than literally everything else?

This is pretty cool. All you need is good horror ambience and you might have a shot at beating the current backrooms games, because its already scary even without sound

One tip for the game would be to make an extra version of 3D where the two images are placed next to each other, and you can cross your eyes until the images overlap to get the same affect.

What a cool idea! It's like the opposite of hyperbolica! Makes me wonder how well a platformer would play in this style

There's a very abstract indie game that did almost exactly this called "A Cosmic Forest" which is very creative and definitely worth a look.

I watched your 2 videos then decided to subscribe your channel, your videos are really motivates me build such games.

Very interesting, thank you for sharing your point of view (that's not a joke haha) about dimensions in games, and your thoughts. It's inspiring

I think it’s best to just say that this game has two dimensions of movement, and one dimension of perception. Real life has three dimensions of movement, and two dimensions of perception - and I think it’s fair to say that no being can have as many dimensions of perception as movement. To have three dimensions of perception would be to have x-ray vision and simultaneously perceive all layers of depth. This x-ray vision manifests itself in Super Mario as your ability to see an enemy beyond Mario’s point of view (like on the other side of a brick block). If a 4-D being were to gaze upon our world, I would imagine they would have such x-ray vision. You could not hide from such a being.

Looking at it being developed I thought it would've been so much more disorienting, but actually playing it it felt like I was actually walking through a 3D space!

It’s a really interesting game and also I do really like the games you make because they look amazing and I want to be like you a game developer when I grow up so I do feel like this could give me a lot of ideas for the games I want to make

What pack did you use on the minecraft footage you showed? Love this concept, I think this is the first time anybody has been able to explain 1D in a way that made sense to me!

3:47 backrooms 1d

3:27 Wow, that actually 3d, but optimized! Basic people - 1D Me - 3D lines

Awesome, I am not really into JavaScript ( I love the editor/compiler hints of type language) but the product is great. I should try making this in Unity with the right camera settings etc it would not be hard. If you custom shader it would run very fast. a VR version would be easy too :) now to find you 4D mine craft video.

Very cool. Any gaps to walk through and you can see, any walls to avoid. Raycasting is perfect for this kind of thing compared to I guess Vectors or others that are too far or yes the 2D but 3D with wall/ceiling, (being the same maybe as the ground before we had more complex and separate drawing or textures) depth perception/distance and height. The perspective is odd but it makes sense as 1D as lines but still a way to navigate. Yeah barcodes being lines and gaps in the lines/shape.

the enemies look kinda scary in 1d perspective ngl

This was utterly fascinating! I fell in love with the concept, wow. It got me thinking: in a truly 1D space, the first-person view of a 1-dimensional being would be a 0-dimensional "screen". What the hell would that even look like? A solid color? I think it would make some sense. No horizontal nor lateral information. Now the question is, could a 0-dimensional display even be used for gameplay at all? Maybe I should give it a try someday, heh.

This is so cool! A true 2D experience

A 1D game in a 2D world where you need to use 3D glasses… makes total sense

itd be cool if you could add a side by side view for people who know how to view crossview images (basically crossing your eyes to merge the 2 images together) but if you do end up doing this, make sure you add both a normal side by side mode and an inverted mode (right side image on the left and left on the right) because some people only know how to do it crosseyed and some people can only do the one where you basically look through your screen.

3:44 backrooms moment

I appreciate all the stuff you do.

The corners of walls (both concur and convex) are sometimes hard to make out when the stripe pattern uses the same color for both sides of the corner. Consider making a black pixel where the two walls meet.

I'd honestly love it if the enemies were 3d, because things get really weird for a 2d creature when their fighting against 3d enemies such as growing into and shrinking out of existence and appearing in any place. Maybe a good idea for a boss fight.

3:18 * realization * you're in the backrooms.

It is really funny and intertaining, thanks a lot for making this game. It's really clarifying trying to understand dimensions. I am a seasoned gamer an i found really annoying the inability of walking sideways, it really remove control from player hands. Beside this it's a really good idea seen nowhere else. Thanks

Great game and rationale behind it. Kudos!!

so basically a first person game in 2D. I like it... Having played the game now, I want to give a little bit of feedback. In a game that's already disorienting, I dont think the gradual deceleration is necessary, at least not to *this degree.* I guess it makes the game feel smoother, but I think you should dial it way back. It should feel like when you stop pressing forward, you stop near instantly. If you want to make it feel less robotic, then sure, give it a little bit of deceleration, but as of how it is right now it feels like youre on ice. Also a bit of story, and designed levels might be nice. Then again, I get it this is an experiment.

really nice but I have one suggestion: while in the game you have no way of knowing where you are where your going and stuff like that. I think a cool feature would maybe be a campus pointing towards where you need to go? it will let you know where your trying to go so your not just walking randomly hoping you get lucky and give a reference point. my best is level 6

Great video! It's 1 dimension view, but you allow to move in 2 axis (it means in 2 dimension)

I'm so glad I'm not the only one that found this game EXTREMELY unnerving. The abstract horror of being placed in an unknown environment that is completely alien to our perception; combined with a threat, made of seemingly nothing but a line of contrasting colors (that can only be interpreted as eyes), stretched vertically (resembling the walls that confine you), moving towards you with no indication of when or where they will appear (ignoring the map); and to realize that this was made unintentionally scary is something to not understate. Also, setting the wall color to Barcode so that even the walls themselves have eyes, and thus reducing the contrast of the enemies even further give additional horror points.

Cool concept, really interesting to understand how depth perception works both in games and in a 2 dimensional environment. Sidenote and out of left field, but I didn't find the texture pack for that minecraft clip in the source, just looked cool.

This is honestly pretty cool! The controls feel a bit floaty like your driving a hover car or sliding around on ice which is a pretty cool little effect

Mash, can you add your own touch to the 3d glasses you are selling and place the third glass on top of the standard two like you did with the 4d miner game? It looks SOO ICONIC and I love the design. We could even call ourselves dimensioners 😂 nerdy fandom that's really interested in dimensions and portals and science fiction reality bending stuff

3:40 this is how early 3d games were made. You made simplified doom my friend.

I love when devs think out of the box. This game is piece of art.

I really enjoyed this video, and found both the concept and the execution interesting and well-done. I do have some thoughts on the technicalities of the game. I took into account your reasoning for this being a 1d game, but I still personally consider it to be a 2d game, do to it taking place in a 2-dimensional world, and also having a top-down view, similar to that of platformers. To me, a 1-dimensional game would be a line, but rather than being the eyes of a 2-dimensional character, it is a top-down view of the line that is the 1-dimensional world. Another way to tackle is would be to have a dot on the screen, representing the point of view of the 1-dimensional character. Again, I want to stress that this is not intended to be criticism of you or the game, just my personal thoughts on the matter. Great video, great game!

I'd actually put this in the same category as other ray-casted games like wolfenstein, somewhere between 2d and 3d. Though it's technically 2d in the backend, it's a rudimentary form of 3d rendering that isn't all that different from modern 3d in concept. Not having the height dimension doesn't change all that much since we still register it as a 3d environment in practice. It's the representation of distance that really matters, I think wolfenstein used the height and placement of the walls, but the shading effect works quite well.

Nice vid i would love to see more of it!!

A 1D game in a 2D screen that looks 3D thanks to the fog effect and "3D effect" Which really just bumps it up to 2D, just not the traditional axis you'd think of of 2D.

It feels like a 2d game with a rendition of a 1d line as it's display. I was hoping for something like a game where you rearrange colored points that make up a line or one where the display is the color in front and behind you and you had to change your position on the line depending in that... But I would have no idea how to make that fun. It's pretty cool though and does meet the stated criteria.

Bro, I had the same idea for ray casting, Great minds think alike... Congrats!

Ah hell yeah, time to dig out that ancient pair of falling-apart 3d glasses that i got in a LEGO magazine when i was a kid

4:12 maybe the real backrooms is in 2d

You could also make 2d game but instead of your vision being horizonal, your vision would be vertical. The movement could be in the height and forward direction instead of the sideways and forward directions.

It’s actually a 2D game represented at a virtual 1D screen.

you can achieve this effect in most 3d engines by using an orthographic camera. usually used for 2d games or ui elements, it would be perfectly valid to just swap the perspective camera on a normal character with it. albeit you wouldnt get the same lateral fov.

My friend actually made something like this too! He said he was wondering how to make a 2d game with a 1d view, and finally figured it out after a really long time. It looks exactly the same as this, and even uses raycasting too! I'm gonna send this video to him and ask if he took inspiration from this...

As much as you insisted this game to be 1 dimensional, I feel I need to put my two cents in. This is a 2D game in the truest sense of the word. We are playing as a two dimensional character, living within a two dimensional plane, with a one dimensional view. We don't call our existence a "2D experience" for viewing through a pair of 2 dimensional lenses - which you help emulate through the red/blue effect. The majority of "2D" games on the market are infact three dimensional - there's a background to look at, put against an object's 2d 'insides', for us to perceive perpendicular from there. Imagine that - your face projecting inside yourself, outwards from the monitor you exist within! And that direction would have a W depth greater than 1! That would be 4th dimensional. If only we could look at that direction in Miner, eh?

Reminds me of the book Flatland. A short intro of the book for anyone curious: “The story describes a two-dimensional world inhabited by geometric figures; women are line segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a square, a member of the caste of gentlemen and professionals, who guides the readers through some of the implications of life in two dimensions. The first half of the story goes through the practicalities of existing in a two-dimensional universe, as well as a history leading up to the year 1999 on the eve of the 3rd Millennium.”

i love this, it is a great idea, and while bieng a little hard to play, it really shows what it would be like to live in a 2d world.