makes games

March: In-Between Projects

What I’ve been working on recently

Hello again! Not much to say this month, because I've mostly been on holiday. I'm doing bits and pieces of work in-between, and in-between that, I've been poking at a holiday project, which I've been calling Mr. Platformer. I mostly started this as an excuse to play around with GBStudio, which I've wanted to do for ages!

It came from brainstorming ideas that felt like a good fit for the constraints of a gameboy - the thing I'm playing around with here is flipping between two colours, and areas that let you swap between them. The weirdly non-obvious thing here is that you actually flip the colours around so that you're always on the background colour, which is way more exciting that just e.g. flipping the player colour around. I can't really articulate why this is - it just feels better.

What's the plan here?

So actually, this idea is one I've played about with before! Back in 2010, at a game jam in Cambridge, I did something very similar for a VMU themed jam - see the gif above! I didn't get more than a couple of rooms in to it, but I've always like the vibes here.

Honestly, I dunno if I'll finish Mr. Platformer? I'm sure it'll show up in something I make eventually, though.

#terrynews

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in reply to @terrycavanagh's post:

andi @mcc4/2/2023, 4:50 PM

Man, I really like both these GIFs. I wonder if these could be somehow combined into one game. Maybe Mr. Platformer gets inside a submarine at some point. Or is piloting a drone vehicle which is why screens keep flipping like security camera footage

If there's an idea of "this becomes different genres depending on vehicle" it opens up the idea of a couple more gameplay styles using the same visual flipping idea. I imagine controlling two Mr. Platformers at the same time, one of which is "dark color" and the other one of which is "light color", one of which has gravity up and the other has gravity down, so when the colors flip both Platformers flip zones at once…

Sorry, kinda rambling here, there's just some interesting design space around this point!

Terry @terrycavanagh4/3/2023, 8:33 AM

Thanks!

I like that two worlds idea, though I think trying to explore it in GBStudio would probably add too much to the GBStudio house of cards, heh. (I am planning to add something like gravity flipping to the mix, though!)