Cool concept..

though wouldn't most people just put their hands over the light sensor instead of turning off the lights?

Yes, one can always cheat. But cheating is just another form of play, a sort of second cousin to hacking.

I had originally intended to use the light sensor along with the (iPhone-only) proximity sensor in order to discourage cheating and it actually worked, but unfortunately that meant jailbreaking the device which was outside the scope of the constraints we had set out for ourselves. Also I built this during a 3-hour train ride, so that constraint required some other design sacrifices.

There are many other aspects of the game that are just plain wrong. For one, the game is an absolute catastrophe from an ecological perspective. Second, why would I have to touch the screen to start ? Starting the game should just be a question of toggling the lights off and on, etc. As the game starts slow, this would not be a problem.

The whole thing was part of a larger, experimental, process and as such was only a proof of concept.