Experimental Games
A collection of lightweight experimental games created over a period of two months. They satisfy a weekly challenge prompt, and constitute an exploration into my personal style of game design: using the affordance of mechanics to express a defined theme or feeling.
These are four curated out of a larger batch of twelve; I feel they best encompass the narratives and emotional experiences I enjoy creating.
Genre: Rage, Point-and-Click, Life Sim, Endless Runner, etc.
Platform: Web (WebGL), single-player
Engine: pico-8 (Lua)
Team: Solo.
Duration: April 2019 - May 2019. Each game: 1-2 days.
Roles & Contributions
Lua Developer: programming game mechanics, designing narrative systems, fixing bugs.
Game Designer: meeting theme goals with mechanical prototypes, tweaking look and feel.
the star
attaining your goals, in spite of it all.
prompt: trying
Tricky control scheme and stamina system to create a disheartening but ultimately rewarding navigation game about striving to chase one’s dreams in the face of burnout.
burn bridge
let go and find freedom.
prompt: surreal
Simple node-burning puzzle mechanics coupled with satisfying audio-visuals to create evocative game about one’s
over-eagerness to indiscriminately leave their tethers in life behind.
memento bombyx mori
a life lived.
prompt: rebirth
Joy-inducing life sim mechanics coupled a short gut-punching story and cycling gameplay to convey an experience about silkworms simple existence before meeting their sericulture fate.
stay the course
fear, and following notions.
prompt: one button
Endless runner-esque swimming gameplay that questions the endless pursuit of things and attempts to present multiple choices when players are fixated by the availability of only a single button.
Lessons Learned.
What went well.
I learned Lua across this project’s timeline. The most impressive, though not detailed here, being a full clone of Snake Pit from the Commodore 64. Along with this, I was able to successfully develop a full mechanical experience every week for twelve consecutive weeks, which is a simple testament to speed and quality.
Areas of improvement.
Most of the games that didn’t make the curation simply lacked playable meat or leaned too hard into a weird humor to be to my liking. I understand that a toylike prototype is actually the best sort of prototype, and that sometimes I just have to get a ‘group roast’ game out of my system. But, as indicated by most of the curation coming from the latter third of the twelve weeks, I opted to lean more towards completed experiences as my taste and Lua ability developed. If I underwent this sort of endeavor again, I would like to see myself lean into the toylike end of things more this time.
Closing thoughts.
I developed a very concise style of game that is designed to express a short story or theme through a playable experience. I am really proud of the work I was able to do through this period, as it has clearly helped me to develop a voice for additional lightweight games, as well as led to opportunities such as an invitation to develop a game for the Cartomancy Anthology. Given I had the time, I would happily undergo this exercise again with a bend towards toylike experiences.