itch.io

I maxed out the craft and reached 218.

This is a great game!

Great movement system and animation. Tough game! I’ve only managed a pathetic score.

I know it’s a cross between a snake and a hippo, but I think of it as a Chinese dragon swooping through the clouds.

This is wonderful. Tough-but-fair gameplay. Pixel particle effect explosions. Power ups. Scoring. Progressively more difficult opponents. Movement with momentum that takes some practice but is not too tricky. That classic ‘80s arcade game “just one more go” addictiveness. And in less than 1k. It’s amazing!

Beautiful, and claustrophobic. I’ve not managed to save my soul yet…

Very very good. Impressive gameplay for 1k of code.

I managed to score 125 points.

Such a fun game!

The outline drawing of Pico-8’s built-in glyphs is very effective.

Yes, I meant in the jam submission page. Thanks for the explanation.

Amazing how much gameplay you crammed into 1k.

How do I get the source code of the submission to lay out properly? I cannot get the markdown syntax for code blocks to work.

Thank you.

I couldn’t get the code to run correctly on Pico-8 0.2.6B.

Edit: Aha! I think it’s because the position of the player is stored in variables x and y and the position of each enemy is stored in variables X and Y (capitals), and the distinction gets lost when you copy and paste into Pico-8.

Tough game. Looks great. And plays well with touch controls on mobile (although it is much easier than using the touchpad on a laptop).

Just amazing!

<rereads description> Oh… passing houses and farms! I was trying to direct the river over them.

Very effective use of the built-in glyphs and colour.

Very good. I’ve not got beyond 19… yet.

I love the animation. So much character in such a small amount of code. It even has camera shake!

I realised that it was too easy to miss that you have completed a level and then die by catching a wrong prime.

While commenting the code I found an opportunity to save three more characters. I’ve used two of those to change the background colour whenever you complete a level, so that it is now obvious when you have a new objective.

Such beautiful presentation. The feeling of dread when the rock lifts up is real!

Thank you. It was very hard to implement both the logic required by the game and an attractive presentation. I found a balance eventually, but presentation had to take a back seat.

I managed to find space for another 4 characters! So I have been able to add back colour.

Tough game! I haven’t got past 6.

A good idea for a game, with very slick presentation for a TweetTweetJam.

I found space for another four (count them!) characters. Enough to add colour. New version coming up…

This game affected me emotionally more than any game I’ve played since Journey. What amazing achievement. Gameplay as art, and in under 1k of code.

That was an enjoyable metroidvania game even without the amazing achievement of squeezing it into 1K of code. Great work.

I completed the game with seven green squares and a time of 1010.8.

Phenomenal!

Thank you.

I have posted the annotated source code of the latest version that explains how the game works and tricks I used to squeeze it into 484 characters.

https://dredds.itch.io/billabong/devlog/729963/annotated-source-code-for-the-latest-version

I managed to squeeze a lot more space out of the code (about 40 characters!) and used it to improve the visuals and still reduce the overall character count to 484. The new version is available on the project page.

Thank you. I think it would work well on an iPad and even support more than two players. Something I’ll have to experiment with in the future.

Thank you. When I noticed the two Truchet tiles in the Pico-8 character set (characters 254 and 255), I couldn’t resist using them.

Thank you. I was surprised too!

When I saw how the flood fill algorithm and the narrow, diagonal channels created by the Truchet tiles combine to create really pleasing flows, I just had to double down on the concept and eliminate anything that got in the way of implementing it in under 500 characters. It was a challenge, but I am very happy with the end result.

Thank you. I plan to post a devlog article with commented source explaining the tricks I used.

I love it. I collected all the numbers in 260 turns.

This is very good. It’s really impressive how much game you squeezed into 500 characters.

I’ve uploaded a new version that fixes an annoying bug. The game would waste a turn if you clicked/tapped on the score panel. Now it detects and ignores input on the score panel.

Happened to me too. I was so surprised by the size of my code. Then I noticed I was looking at tokens, and found I had used over 800 characters. Luckily I had features I could remove and lots of scope for squeezing the size down.

Thank you for your kind words, everyone. I really appreciate it.

Very good! And very creepy.

I got 13 elements, but alas cannot work out how to get any further.

Incredible!

The highest score I’ve managed is 36.