Week 6 - Another Bitsy game - The Weekend

Last week I set out to make a bullet hell prototype, but instead I made yet another Bitsy short story, which you can play here: https://matzieq.itch.io/the-weekend

I've learned a couple of lessons. The first one was again, a matter of scope. I thought if I wanted to "make a moment from an X game" it would be doable in a week, as opposed to "make an X game", which would not be doable in a week. Well, making a moment is certainly doable in less time than making an entire game, but this time I've picked a very specific genre, which, as it turns out, is an incredibly complex one, and making even a simple moment (like a single boss fight) from such a game would be maybe doable in a month, but in a week, and with my schedule - it was simply not feasible. 

So I wanted to settle down on just a vertical shmup. But the issue here was this: look at my offer at https://matzieq.itch.io/. Among the comments that you could make having viewed that, there would likely be one like this: "boy, that guy really likes him some Space Invaders". And you would be correct, Space Invaders happens to be one of my favorite games of all time, and I've made a lot of clones of Space Invaders. In fact, when a long time ago, in caveman time, I first sat down and learned some GameMaker, a Space Invaders clone was the first thing that I thought I'd make on my own. Therefore I scrapped the idea of making a vertical shmup. I didn't think there would be much more I could make in a week than another space invadersy game, and there wouldn't be much to learn from that.

Instead, I decided to give in to my deep desires. After I made a Bitsy game last week, I just couldn't get Bitsy out of my mind. It was like with Pico-8 - I passed it everyday in the street while going to work, and didn't pay much attention to it, but when I finally stopped and had a conversation with it, I immediately fell in love and wanted to spend my every waking moment with it. That was possibly the worst analogy I've ever made.

This entire situation also got me thinking about what I wanted to get from this challenge, and I'm starting to lean into the reasoning that perhaps maybe it could be not false to assume that I've already got it. I figured out what games I want to make. Right now I am considering delving into a 1-2 month project, a spiritual successor to my favorite game made by myself, Shards of Destiny. How do I know I'll be able to do it in 1-2 months, and not 4-5 years? Because that's what took me to get Shards to a state I'm reasonably happy with, and I'll be using Pico-8, which won't let me go over a certain treshold of stuff to cram in. So I feel reasonably confident I can do it. I am also planning this thing out in considerable detail on paper, so that I'm not doing any yolo development which ALWAYS leads straight to half-done purgatory. In the meantime, I'll probably also keep making small Bitsy vignettes, because I love making them.

This plan keeps me out of tutorial hell, and whenever I sit at a computer to "work on games", I'll know exactly what to do. Which is where I hoped the "a game a week" challenge would lead me.