Posted October 04, 2023 by MindlessTurtle
#themes
When I first heard of this theme, I instantly thought of Fry and Bender from Futurama (1999) on Fox and fell in love with the idea of having a buddy duo for a game.
First game I thought of with that bond-dynamic was A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia (1989) for the NES. I liked their interactions together: the blob nobly follows you wherever you go while the two of you explore and unlock puzzles.
Somewhere in the development process, while throwing ideas at the wall, I stumbled onto Kirby's Dream Land 3 (1997) for the SNES, and I really enjoyed how different allies and different powers resulted in different abilities. I wanted to capture that extra dimension to explore new capabilities.
Unfortunately, adding that extra feature resulted in a lot of tokens, which made it a little tricky to complete the game on the Pico-8. I stuffed as much as I could while making some compromises, and I'm happy with the result.