BoingMaster Special Disruptions: Meeting Minutes on the Four Promises Behind the WARNING! Banner
Minutes No. 1
“Disrupt them, but never unfairly”
(A small meeting room under a city night sky. One item on the agenda: how do we harass a running stickman 25 different ways without crossing the line? This post writes up BoingMaster’s special disruptions as meeting minutes. The speeches are invented; the rules, timings and wording in each “Decision” box come straight from the game’s source.)
The BoingMaster special disruptions are 25 screen-pestering devices such as blackout, fog and earthquake. Yet they all follow four promises set at the design stage. Instead of a list of types, read them as minutes from the meeting where the disruption team set those promises one by one.
Meeting begins, mid-run
S#1 Outside the meeting-room window · city night
(Outside, the stickman runs past. Three hearts float above. The chair points a pen at the window.)
Design One item today. How do we disrupt that kid?
Screen Take away their view first. How about a blackout?
Outside the window, just before the run starts. Three hearts.
Disruptions never kill
Physics Low gravity plus blackout, and they will surely fall.
Design No. A disruption may hide the view or make controls harder, but it never causes a death directly. Deaths must always come from failing to clear the terrain.
A fall like this comes from a hazard on the ground, not from a disruption. It is your own feet that did it.
- First design principle in the source: never kill. It notes that “I died to a disruption” breeds distrust, not difficulty.
Always warn at the start
Screen Then let’s darken the screen silently. They’ll jump, right?
Design A sudden black screen reads as a bug, not a feature. At the moment it starts, give a banner and a vibration first.
“WARNING!” The banner that appears in the middle of the screen the moment a disruption hits. Sound and vibration come with it.
- When a disruption hits, a “WARNING!” banner, a crash sound and vibration come together.
- It only hits at the moment the level changes, starting from level 3. A source comment says cause and effect must sit together so the player can learn.
Ease in, ease out
Physics Low gravity should kick in instantly and make them float. That’s fun, isn’t it?
Design Switching on and off abruptly is a defect. Let it build over the first 15% and fade over the last 25%. The exit is longer on purpose, because getting your view back suddenly is a surprise too.
Another disruption begins behind the same WARNING! banner. The effect, such as floaty jumps, swells in gradually after it.
- Effect strength rises from 0 to 1 and returns to 0. It builds over the first 15% and fades over the last 25%.
- Duration differs per disruption. Ones that block a lot of view are short (blackout 4.5 s, glare 2.2 s); physics changes that take adjusting to are long (low gravity 9 s).
One at a time, never the same twice in a row
Screen Ink blot and fog both at once would be overwhelming.
Design With two overlapping, nobody knows what made them lose. Only one at a time, and we reshuffle only after the whole deck of 25 has been dealt. The same one twice in a row would also read as a bug.
Every disruption starts with the same “WARNING!” banner. Just one at a time.
- Only one disruption is active at any time.
- Types are drawn one by one from a shuffled deck of 25, and the deck is reshuffled when empty (a shuffle bag).
Signing the minutes
S#2 Meeting room · the lights go out
(The stickman runs past the window and fades into the distance. Four lines are written at the bottom of the minutes.)
Stickman (running) Warning! Yeah, I figured. Bring it on.
The next time the screen goes dark or fog rolls in, think back: did “WARNING!” show up first? A disruption always gives a signal before it starts. To feel it yourself, open BoingMaster with the button below and run past level 3.
Play BoingMaster now
Playing it is much faster than reading about it.
Find the other Master Series games all in one place at hanilab.app.
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