Small narrative game created in PICO-8 for Ludum Dare 52. Tells an alternate story about the birth of the Ursa Maior star constellation.
Enjoy!
Controls
Arrow keys - Move the bear
(X) - Action key Eat
Notes and Behind The Scenes
The game was created as a submission for Ludum Dare 52 in the jam category. This was our second time with a game jam together, and the first time on Ludum Dare. We were so excited to place 4th on Game Off, that we decided to try PICO-8 again.
We learnt a lot last time, and I was a little more familiar with PICO-8 and it's capabilities. I think we did great, we basically finished with every major thing we wanted, but some things (like changing the weather) had to be left out of the final game, because of the time limit. It's still very much playable, but definitely needs some refinement. The most challenging thing this time was probably the coding (I did it alone again) and solving the problem of sprites being rendered on top of each other on the map (mountains, trees etc.) to create better vibes, and with the collision detection for so many objects, which caused performance issues, which are mostly fixed in the final release (mostly...). The code is poor quality as well. I think this is a game jam thing, if you have to rush with everything, and you still fixing something critical in the last hour you have to accept that the code won't be the best.
Still it was really fun, and PICO-8 is an amazing tool, it feels amazing to build a game from the ground up without third-party assets. Next time we probably try something new, but we'll definitely come back to PICO-8 later. Thanks for reading the post!
Credits
Zahkros - Game design, Music, SFX
bartalomew - Game design, Art
ekaktusz - Programming
Special thanks to: Dzsodzso (helped with the art, website, and with basically everything) and for koeves for the music.