Checkpoint Alternatives

Proposed to Epic Games, introduction from SPJ

In videogame worlds, checkpoints are a welcome way to avoid hours of button-mashing. But the usual convention in a game is that time simply rewinds to the checkpoint, like the eternal repeats in the movie Groundhog Day. What if a checkpoint worked like a functional programming continuation, where state could be directly manipulated before continuing? With the Verse functional programming language integrated into Epic Games infrastructure, this project will be an opportunity to invent new kinds of gameplay. You'll need to think about what parts of the state can be rendered in the game, and how the player can make the game modify itself at this meta-level.

(original suggestion from Michael Lee)