Bitsy Games Chat and Recs!

Bitsy is a tiny little gem of a game engine! You can use it to make little places to explore, and little folks and creatures to talk to. Some bitsy games evoke a grand sense of exploration in the vein of old-school adventure games, others succinctly capture a tiny experience. Most games are the perfect length to play on a coffee break.

You can make your very own bitsy games straight out of your browser from here!

The engine itself has a bunch of restrictions which I personally find makes for better exercises in design, such as:

• 3 colors max (for background, tiles, and sprites)
  
• 8x8 tile size
  
• 2 frames of animation per tile
  
• 16x16 tile screen size

It's super easy to pick and play around with, but a lot of people have done a lot of cool stuff with it! I even made a little thing in like, twenty minutes flat! you can talk to some birds and accomplish jack shit!

I think it'd be fun to have an Eagle Time bitsy game jam at some point, where we all spend a weekend or somesuch making tiny little games, but in the interim we can also use this thread to share cool bitsy games by other people.

Little experiences:
a vision of the sublime - artist seeking inspiration
Novena - where the sea grants wishes
sandcastles - build a sandcastle!
Diplomat Simulator - the life of a diplomat, ferrying messages twixt leaders
What Was Found In The Underground - archaeological divings, a charming little land of strange crittersome characters
Don't Step On The Flowers - content warning: cussing
Slow Growing - what is this, a garden for snails? I love. it's adorable
Zeta Station Has Gone Quiet Lieutenant Essex is here to solve the mystery of why Zeta Station cut off communications all of a sudden.
Some Space - a meditation and reminder, with a charming range of sets/scenery.


fun experiments with the medium:
rain - room exits used to travel through time instead of space.
snowcrash - survive (or don't!) after your plane crashes on a mountainside. Uses yes/no decision tiles to track your choices which affect the story.
bullshit fish names - impressing your date when you know jack and fuck about fish
Wandering Home - atmospheric lingering on a moment of directionlessness. Great backing tune and art on this one!

explorations:
flotsam - remnants around a tower
Junk Shop Telescope - what can you see on the moon with your second-hand telescope?
W.I.P - autobiographical bitsy about a young game dev
Kerry and Alice Run Into Some Trouble - Alice is a space whale and you're gonna have to sort out the stomach bug she's got before you can get on with your jobs. Cool maze-esque elements to this game!
SPACE RAT - someone stole your lunchbox! Go search planets high and low to find the thief!
Realm of the Dread Sorceress - one of the most complex and ambitious games I've seen made in bitsy. :>:< Recommended:>:<

I started working on a thing!

This looks pretty fun! Maybe I'll start making something in it tonight

I've started making a game about a fish getting love.



This is very fun to do.

I'm working on another game right now, but I will check this out when I am done

This looks nice!

Love bitsy, would absolutely take part in or help run an ET Bitsy Game Jam. Thanks for all the good games to check out, Schazer!

I'm still working on mine, which, in the absence of gamejam-esque time constraints, has ballooned into a wayyyy bigger project than I originally intended.

I'd also like to suggest the game Dark and Cold, which I found on itch.io while looking for inspiration. I think it uses a few hacks for footprints/music, but it's still very impressive and has a lot of neat ideas for mechanics.

I read elsewhere about the footprint hack! It's done by creating an item that just looks like a blank tile and has no dialogue attached when you pick it up.

Once the item's been picked up, you can see the footprint tiles that were underneath the whole time.

Oh, so it's not even really a hack at all, just clever use of mechanics! (For music you have to actually alter the output html.)

On Tuesday, Trevor Found His Shovel and got to digging the next day. This game author's written some cool stuff about how to use variables in bitsy, which may prove to just overcomplicate a First Bitsy Project, but may prove useful later!

Note that the "say" command mentioned there is deprecated, use "print" instead. It took me a little while to figure that one out.

Some more nice things I found:

Kleu's music details the departure of a song in a shell of clay.

Where Do I Fit? - an exploration in fitting in.

A prison strike commemorated with poetry in bitsy

learn about harvestable plants (and enjoy gathering mushrooms without the risk of poisoning) in Forest Walk

Midnight Harvest has a lovely art style and color scheme. You're the grim reaper, heading to the overworld.

After - a traveller passing through a city where the rain won't stop