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theyoungghosts · 6 years

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Odd Bits of Bitsy - Experimental games made using the Bitsy engine

Bitsy is a game-making tool created by Adam le Doux (https://ledoux.itch.io/bitsy) that enables users to create small, pixel-y virtual worlds. Although primarily used for making, what are in essence, walking simulators with attractive 8-bit graphical leanings, there have been plenty of examples of people making wholly different genres of games within the engine. Here, I will attempt to catalogue a few that I find rather intriguing.

Time To Dig Out That Ugly Christmas Jumper by jonosandilands

A hybrid between a maze and what could be described as a “knitting simulator”, Ugly Christmas Jumper has the player knit multiple jumpers whilst text occasionally pops up talking about the patterns you are currently knitting. Perhaps it might be worth making it a Christmas tradition to play this?

Skeletal DOS Dreams – DISK 1 by *triage

It’s Windows 95! But in Bitsy! You play as what I can only assume to be a sentient, human personification of a computer mouse and explore the inner workings of a computer whilst being helped along the way by your guide “Decovery”, the computer’s cloud who happens to have a sweet, motherly personality.

This game has a rather dark undertone to it, the music (a remix of Brian Eno’s Windows 95 sounds), whilst calming, carries a sinister, cold vibe to it that nicely underscores the odder aspects of this game, such as the folders screen, wherein the folders you can interact with contain strings of numbers followed by what appears to be diary entries from someone held captive. “At least they could have painted the walls.”, “I was trapped here for too long.”

This is also one of the few Bitsy games I’ve played (although there is probably more) that has a 3D-ish section to it, in this game, it’s a digital cave filled with unused remnants of your hard drive who, when spoken to, seem slightly bitter about their abandonment. There’s no exit from the cave other than the way you came, a window at the end of the cave seeming to hint at a glimmer of hope for those who are still dwelling there.

Overall, if you’re looking for something with a slightly darker vibe to it than most Bitsy games, I recommend this.

Silence Would Be Better by Cephalopodunk

You play a radio tuner in this one. Simply use the left and right arrow keys to pick a station and use the up arrow to tune in. Then you can sit back and enjoy the odd and humorous captions that float from the radio’s speakers, including quite a few lampoonings of popular music. (The “Call Me Maybe” parody that you’re occasionally subjected to gave me quite a few chuckles.)

The interesting thing about this game, other than the concept, is that it was built using both Bitsy and Tracery, a tool primarily used to make bots (among other things. The website does note that it’s been used for games before) and I would love to find out how it was implemented specifically to this game.

Midnight Dungeon by PixelArtM

A ZX-Spectrum style roguelike-ish puzzle game where you navigate through a small dungeon to look for treasure. You encounter a couple of enemies (who can’t kill you, so don’t worry) whilst navigating the dungeon for objects to find to aid in your quest for this treasure.

I loved the colour scheme for this one, in addition to the puzzle aspects. We need more puzzle games in Bitsy.

BitSnake by Sean S. LeBlanc

It’s Snake, in Bitsy! Surely I don’t need to explain how to play this one, grab the fruit whilst trying to avoid hitting the walls or backing into yourself, which causes you to become an ouroboros and eat yourself. There’s some rather nice animation on the snake for this one, and the colour palette is pleasing. Worth playing if you want to re-live those memories of playing this on your phone, or... wherever you happened to play it for the first time.

Stars Below by Sarah Gould

Extremely pretty cutscene-like poem-game where you only need to use the up and down arrow keys to move and watch the scene emerge before your eyes. I cannot empathise enough how pretty the art is in this, and the music just adds another layer of beauty to it. It’s extremely short and well worth the minute or so it takes to play/watch.

Amethyst Horologist, Radical Archaeologist by Cephalopodunk

Another puzzler! This one has you taking the role of the title character as she uses time-travel to find interesting artifacts from the building site of a soon to be opened shopping mall. The different areas were so interesting to explore despite mostly being all the length of one room, and the different characters in each were interesting to talk to, including a rather grim-reaper looking druid who guards the same site in each different era somehow. The game’s sense of humor was great as well.

Final by Mozz

Creepypasta in Bitsy form. This short but spooky game tells the tale of a kid and his friend who end up playing a haunted video game. Whilst I couldn’t understand exactly what was happening in front of me as I played, I did feel rather unnerved, the apparent references to the creepypasta “The King Come Down” adding to the creep factor quite a bit. The art style is grim and bleak, with glitchy segments and a scene involving what seems to be ink or water spilling from the TV. I’d recommend checking this if you’re looking for a horror Bitsy game to try.

Hell by onion

A rather light-hearted romp through hell, this seriously reminded me of a modern-day comedy equivalent of Dante’s Inferno, only instead of Virgil, you’re guided along by the devil himself, who, unsurprisingly, acts as unhelpful as humanely possible, spewing out dialogue in the tone of a teenager snarking at their parents, which made his every interaction a pleasure to read through. The different classes of sinners gave me some good chuckles a few times, and the minions of hell were surprisingly adorable!

#bitsy #indie games #Adam Le Doux #onion #mozz #cephalopodunk #Sarah Gould #Sean LeBlanc #PixelArtM #*triage

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 2 years

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tuesday again 2/22/22

what a pleasing date! a twosday, even! one of my favorite coworkers is getting married today in a botanical garden and i send good wishes from afar!

also, lots of short things this week bc a bitch is having some Medication Side Effects i need to tough out a bit longer before this doc will be convinced they are adversely affecting my life

listening orville peck has a new EP out but none of the songs have really latched themselves onto the black matter of my brain yet. my sister sent me a tiktok that had me in hysterics and ended up having a full version, great beeps and bloops, we sing “pull up a stepladder and give me a peck” when her cats are yelling at her from the floor now

reading fallow week

watching the cuphead show. my boss and i keep very close tabs on video games media efforts, and i’m not like contractually obliged here on this blog or in my actual dayjob (thank god) to watch every piece of video games media, but boy do i love to give opinions on it.

my dad’s side of the family has very strong subspecialities and opinions about different areas of film history, bc they’re all engineers and designers and married other engineers and designers. my favorite uncle veered really hard into the history of animation, like The Thing To Do when you visited him was sit in the pool until you got unrecognizably pruny and then huddle under a blanket in the air conditioning watching looney tunes in chronological order. so i cracked this childrens show open like WHEE a fun tribute to early animation!

in general, i find the first episode of the cuphead show to have a really unnerving combination of some of the rubber-hose early-animation style with modern adult animated american television facial expressions and dialogue. it has shot sequences, shooting angles, and moving background elements that felt very modern and jarring to me. the opening titles are killer (probably bc they’re done by an entirely different team)! the watercolor backgrounds are lovely! the devil’s song and dance number was fun to watch! everything else i don’t really care for and so i will not be giving it the ol three-episode try. the second episode has a “whoops some irresponsible kids have to take care of a baby!” shit and i fucking hate that trope. if anyone’s watched it straight through, let me know if it’s worth gritting my teeth to see the cab-calloway-inspired character’s walk cycle or nah

reading interviews it sounds like it was underfunded, a lot of “well here’s where we had to lean on the magic of netflix technology to cut corners”, which is a real shame- it could have been a lovely throwback and tribute to early animation and a really interesting intro to new generations without insane uncles. IF they got the money to really lean into the 2D aspect of it, given that the game was so lovingly hand-animated and is still memorable years after release in a very crowded genre FOR that art style. shame this childrens show was not the thing i, a sophisticated adult, was looking for, glad studio mdhr got that fat fat netflix check even if i think it’s a poor likeness of uhhh Their Game. always fun to keep an eye on netflix’s newest video game transmedia efforts, even if it’s weird that both castlevania and arcane have been widely praised for their animation and this one simply doesn’t hold a fuckin candle imo. part of that is different teams, part of that is they’re less willing to spend money on their more explicitly kids stuff, wish it was different, what can ya do

playing junk shop telescope by cephalopodunk, a free short in-browser bitsy game tagged not-exactly-sure-how-a-telescope-works with exactly one mechanic, and it does glorious things with that one mechanic. it’s so clearly signposted, i never got lost or turned around or stuck, mwah. love space, love pixels, the ending screen actually made me gasp so i’ll forgive it for straying very close to a specific conspiracy theory i had to debunk constantly at the astronomy tour internship.

how did i find this: on the itch.io recs page of a different game maker i like, after i struck out sifting through the free + browser + recent + popular intersection of tags. do wish itch let you exclude tags. i will never want to play a horror game in my life. bio/shock was pushing it

making i’ve been thinking a lot lately about how difficult any given long-running podcast is to get into. there’s an expectation of prior knowledge about injokes and references by episode 100, i think, and it’s hard to know what a good entry point is.

so i’m going to explain what the fuck “the wives” and “the boys” and “cowboyblogging” is, since i spent a good portion of last year in no fit state to do much of anything and it’s been kind of iffy so far this year also but i’ve looped back all the way around to productive procrastination on hobbies instead of productive procrastination on life shit.

coming up on three years ago, i watched the entire dollars trilogy movies (for a fistful of dollars, for a few dollars more, the good the bad and the ugly) with an upsettingly high fever and wrote a fic where i put the horrible men (angel, blondie, and tuco) into the postapocalyptic roleplaying video game fallout: new vegas (where in my version, the best version, the player character “the courier” is married to a pair of butch mechanic assassins veronica and christine). i have almost no memory of writing that original first fic, but it did spawn a much much larger fic (”The” cowboyfic, if you will) unpacking what exactly happens post-game and what happens when you get everything you think you want and some stuff about the fall of empires and capitalism.

this fic assumes some degree of knowledge of at least one of these properties. there is a dramatic difference between my writing ability of three years ago, when the tuesdayposts weren’t even a thing yet, and my writing abilities now where i give opinions about data for a living. there are only like half a dozen people i shout to about this thing. this is purely to amuse myself. i encourage you, the reader, to block the “cowboyblogging” and “ain’t that a kick in the head” tags if you’ve been reading this like “okay now i know what she’s talking about and i’ve decided i do not wish to see this content, why have there been no textile crimes yet this year”. i’m dealing with clothes moths right now it gives me the serotonin to make the horrible men pine and the bisexual/lesbian trio be disgustingly happy.

if you’d like to dip in anyway, good news! i didn’t put out a new chapter but i did double the length of the previous chapter and am working on this whole fucking project in a much more serious and sustained way (i say, knocking on wood).

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #Spotify

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