"Universal" ran a competition, hosted by Unity, to see who could come up with an original idea for a computer game based on one of these iconic stories:

• Battlestar Galactica (2004 tv series)
• Voltron The Legendary Defender (2016 tv series)
• Back to the Future film trilogy
• Jaws (1975 film)
• Turok Son of Stone comic book characters

I locked myself in my thinking chamber for weeks over this.

Eventually I staggered out, dehydrated, exhausted, reeking of whisky, with the following brilliant ideas scrawled on a stack of napkins. I did not enter the competition.

Back to the Future: Waiting Room Simulator

Doc & Marty have traveled from 2015 to 1991 to fix a rift in space-time. While there, they've blown a tire on the Delorean. They now have to wait to be served in a car service center, amidst a time-dilation vortex. Play as Doc or Marty in this ultra slow-core game, at one-hundredth of real-time, turning a 2-hour waiting room experience into an epic and excruciating 200 hours of game-play. You must fight dehydration, boredom, leg cramps and a chronic shortage of chairs, in a drab landscape peopled with old magazines, a semi-functioning water cooler, and a blaring television that isn't quite tuned to any particular television channel.

Jaws' Prequel: Peter Benchley's Personal Cocktail Chef

You are a bartender in a fancy bar, in the early seventies. Peter Benchley is a struggling writer trying to think of an idea for a book. He is slumped over at your bar, and he is struggling. So far all he's come up with is "'Antlers!' It's about a small town terrorized by a rogue deer!", "Trunks! It's about a... a rogue elephant, and he, um... he terrorizes a small village!" and "'Hooves!' It's also about a rogue deer who terrorizes a small town. Oh it's a bit like 'Antlers' isn't it." You must balance your bar supplies, while selling drinks to other patrons and continually mixing free drinks for Peter, occasionally engaging the young man in small talk, in the hope that he will eventually hit upon a winning plot for his novel.

External links

• Universal GameDev Challenge