Zen and the Art of Controller Mapping
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 10:18AM 
Good Game is a great Australian gaming TV show/podcast by the ABC. Even if you're not a 'gamer', you may like to watch the podcast for industry news, history segments, in-depth UI discussion and interviews. Is good. Recently, GG featured local software developer Farbs, big-studio guy turned solo-game-producer. Fishie Fishie is one of his great Flash-based 'casual' computer games. The basic objective of the game is to catch and eat the small fish, while avoiding the nasty big fish. It's much fun and unexpectedly challenging. Download Fishie Fishie for free!
What's interesting from a UI perspective is that the entire game is played with a single key. Let's say you prefer the spacebar. Normally, your fish character slowly rotates in one direction. Pressing and holding the spacebar key makes the fish spin in the other direction. If you repeatedly tap the spacebar, the fish swims forward. So simple and so effective. I'm interested to hear what people think. What other examples are there of zen-like controller mappings?