Creating a thread for my upcoming Playdate game, XTRIS!
This game is a re-imagining of my PICO-8 game of the same title - posted to itch in 2023! Originally created for TweetTweetJam in 479 characters, I then expanded the game to have 10 levels. And now, I'm here again, attempting to bring the idea even further!
My personal objectives for this game:
Learn about the Playdate SDK - get familiar with the development paradigms and tricks that make this device special!
Create a simple-to-understand game with plenty of replay value. Someone brand new to gaming should be able to understand the game and perform reasonably
Focus on game feel and juice. Although I'm three years deep into game development, juice has always been a weakness of mine. With simpler game mechanics, I give myself more time to add polish!
Key features coming:
Multiple levels to play
Public leaderboards and local stat tracking
Unlockable content and in-game achievements
I am coming from a background of PICO-8 and LOVE2D (and more recently, Picotron!). I've been developing games in my free time for just over three years and having a blast. You can check out my past games here: https://fletchmakesstuff.itch.io
Small update - spent the morning re-writing the menuing system to support animating between pages! The next step will be the large effort to beautify each page
Unfortunately I can't post links to itch or Lexaloffle on this forum but you can find it on either platform by searching for "XTRIS". My username on itch is "fletchmakesstuff" and on Lexaloffle it's "fletch_pico"
Today's update: I made some small tweaks here and there, but mostly I've been exploring different ways to add more juice to the level layout itself. I started by exploring tilting the map via drawSampled():
Unfortunately this proved too slow for the on-device CPU. Even with some optimizations, I could only get it to hover around 80% CPU usage, which doesn't leave me room for more effects, so I began thinking of other ideas...
... like perhaps sliding the map around in response to inputs! Here's two versions. The first is more snappy, and the second is a bit more "floaty".
These require significantly less CPU to run, which is perfect for now. If you have other ideas to try, I'm open to suggestions! (there are some visual glitches with moving the screen around like this due to the way I handle scene transitions but I'll be sure to clean those up)
Lastly, I added a system menu shortcut to quit the game early, just in case someone decides they don't want to play the level any longer.
This looks so good! I love the snappier movement version.
When thinking about juicin' it up, I think next of the boxes and X. Could something happen to a box when you move in for a successful clear? line gets thicker, box gets bigger or smaller, something to register a successful "hit."
Could the X have some dragon ball speed lines in the direction of its next home? You want this to be super quick so nothing long, but as I watch this I feel like I'm chasing a single X as it zips from box to box. It could have a little Roadrunner character with something simple to communicate direction. Might not be what you're going for, but that's what I see
Love these ideas!! Yes definitely want to add juice to those elements! Definitely animation on the square, and anime is a great reference - kinda also makes me want to add a cartoony flame animation to the top of the cursor as you get a higher score
Also on my list is juicing up the background - maybe a crowd is forming and cheering louder in the foreground, Paper Mario style? Or maybe stars appear with each X collected, leaving you with a galaxy at the end of the round? Lots to ponder
We also worked on high-score tracking so that we can implement achievements and unlockables! All of this was done live on my cozy and friendly Twitch stream - come join us sometime! Fletch Makes Stuff
Development is "slowing down" in the sense that since the core game loop is complete, the rest of the development is just going to be polish. The ancient wisdom holds true: it takes 20% of the effort for 80% of work, and the last 80% of effort to make the work complete!
The past couple days I've been thinking hard about the UI and how to add more interest / depth. You can see the results of that exploration here:
Before we can try submitting to the Catalog (as it's not guaranteed we'll get in), I have some goals left on the to-do list:
Make menus more pretty - level previews, previous best scores, title art, etc
Tie in SFX and BGM - I've started working with artists on both of these to add some auditory juice to the game! I've already received the VO samples, and let me tell you - they are INCREDIBLE
Add a juicy game-over screen - show stats for the run, any achievements or milestones that the player might have unlocked, etc
Create an in-game shop for showing off achievements / selecting new skins
All of this amounts to a month (maybe more) of work, and all of it is supporting development to make sure that the game feels consistent and juicy on every single page, not just the play screen! Definitely feeling that all-to-familiar game dev canyon sinking in but I know that once we're on the other side, it'll have been so worth it!
I'll try to post updates as I can when there are visually interesting things to show off, but the posts might slow down a bit while I'm in the weeds of UI programming.
Just to let thread readers know - I've opened up playtesting in the official Playdate Discord server! Find my post in #playtesting-request to give it a shot! It's still early in development but I think there's useful feedback to be gotten at this point.
Okay so I went quiet for a week - took that time off to play Satisfactory 1.0 a bit after it launched! I'm committing to working on XTRIS a bit each night though, now that I have most of the factory-sim jitters out of me!
Nothing to show off visually from tonight unfortunately. I spent some time diving back into the code and preparing the game for background music! The soundscape is really important in an arcade game like this, and I want to make sure I get it just right. My composer had sent me some first drafts that sounded great and I'm looking forward to tweaking and refining them to be perfect.
Finally back with another update! Tonight I started refining the main menu - while there's a long way to go, the biggest win was getting a handle on porting animations crafted in Pixel Composer into the Playdate project. With that knowledge in front of me, I'll be able to hand-craft UI animations just the way I want, export and import to Playdate.
Previously I was doing everything via lerps and mathematical approximations which made more juicy possibilities just out of reach for me. Looking forward to seeing what this tool can do for me
Quick update! Been spending more time with Pixel Composer and learning more about how the software works. It's extremely powerful, but doesn't have much documentation or community support yet (outside of a Discord that is somewhat inactive). It's been fun but challenging to teach myself how things fit together. While these may not be the final versions of assets, I'm enjoying getting a grasp of what I can do!
P.S. I'm only now noticing that every text affect I've done is some version of a text ripple! I will be adding other sorts of effects to the game, I guess this was just a subconscious theme in my brain
It is REALLY starting to hit home that we're only 1-2 months of polish away from being able to release this thing! It makes me a bit emotional - I've spent the past 3 years practicing game dev with countless game jams and unfinished projects, but this feels like the first REAL thing I'm gonna see through to the finish line.
I'm feeling very proud of myself, and also just very humbled at how any video games ever get created at all! Even just a simple arcade game like this is taking SO MUCH effort... it's a miracle every time a new game is born I suppose
Hope y'all are doing well, and thanks for coming along so far on this ride!! Excited to continue bringing XTRIS to life together with y'all
Achievement browser and selectable skins! They'll have to be unlocked by reaching certain milestones, such as: total number of items collected, total number of levels played, high scores, and placing on the leaderboards!
I have also started working on SFX - I'm thinking of having two selectable sound schemes for folks to choose from: beeps and clicks. I know some folks with hearing sensitivities (I have some myself) and so its important to me to accommodate all types of sensory needs with the game!
Finally, I added some light visual animations to @jordancarroll 's AMAZING VO work - every 40 points, he will pop in to encourage you to keep going!
Every day brings us closer to a finished product! Based on rumblings I've heard in the Playdate community regarding Catalog Drop dates, it is looking like, if accepted, XTRIS would come to catalog late January or early February.
