Line wobbler is a one-dimensional dungeon crawler game created by Robert Baumgarten. It is controlled with a custom hand-made wobble control stick and the display is a long ultrabright LED strip. You move the character to start to end by pushing on the stick, and by wobbling the stick you can attack enemies and get past obstacles. Running on an arduino, the game won several awards such as the Game Design Award at IndieCade 2015.

I selected this project because it makes an interesting playable game under extremely tight constraints. Typically, 2 dimensions are needed to provide sufficient player freedom in games, but the installation was able to provide an interesting and playable experience using just one dimension. Even in the very broad field of visual arts there are very few pieces which are one dimensional, something which further makes this piece stick out on my mind.

Critiquing this work, it definitely did an excellent job at creating an interesting engaging experience with it's constraints. By making it so that you could only attack by wobbling the stick, the creator increased both the challenge and the "play" of the work. It was simply more fun and interesting to tie combat to the motions of a vibrating door stopper rather than a simple button press. In fact, the creator credited this video for the inspiration of the mechanic: