Roshamboom began with just another fun distracting link from Jesse. Someone had taken the time to create a game of Rock Paper Scissors using 101 different gestures. Its tag line was “The most terrifyingly complex game ever.”  It was displayed in a kind of chart of what beats what, so you and a nerdy friend could memorize the 101 gestures and 5,050 outcomes and intrigue and baffle everyone that sees you playing it…awesome. This reminded me of my quest to produce the most difficult maze in history. Ah, high school.

Around the same time Jesse introduced us to this game, we were having a much belated wrap-up on a project that didn’t sail so smoothly: designing and building a load of Silverlight controls. Nobody in the design department was familiar with building anything Silverlight, but we were confident and optimistic. Our positivity died painfully. While working on this project the tension in the design loft grew arms and legs and ran around stabbing us all in the side with thorns. We could also hear screams next door from the dev loft. The theme of the meeting was how to avoid this monster tension in the future, and we all decided it was best to make a Silverlight GAME! For FACEBOOK! Because there weren’t any yet and we’re THAT GOOD! I believe it was Andy that suggested we build “The most terrifyingly complex game ever” in Silverlight. It could have been Lisa. Everyone agreed. Yes, this was the solution to our chagrin.

I took another look at the RPS101 website, and found that the more I familiarized myself with it, the more impressive it was. The creator didn’t just figure out the game, he gave it real hilarity. The ridiculousness of “Paper covers Rock” was furthered 5,047 more times in ways like “Monkey flings poop at King,” and “Queen’s bosom is Mountain.” Genius!

Ian, Stephanie, and I had fun designing the controls and working out the functionality. Inspired by airplane safety information cards and the ViewMaster, we all came up with different screens and eventually married them all to create what is online now. I believe it was Matt that suggested we ask Lisa’s friend’s class of 2nd graders to draw some of the more appropriate gestures, which Stephanie used to design the ranking system.

We showed it to the creator, David C. Lovelace, and he had this to say:

"Roshamboom is awesome! Everyone at Plexipixel really did a great job with it. RPS-101 took a year to develop on my end, so I was impressed at how well its complexity was preserved in this very engaging, addictive new version. I like the “view all” functionality, the challenge history, and the interactive way it publishes match outcomes on your page. It’s just brilliant. I can finally play this game the way it was probably meant to be played — not even I can really be sure! — since I never expected anyone to actually remember all 101 throws, and certainly not all 5,050 non-tie outcomes!”

Hooray!