Well I've been wanting to try out low-res and pixel arty things for a while now, so here's my chance.

I've decided to go for a side-scroller (or at least a side-view) game. My main source of inspiration is Knytt stories. Its minimalistic and fits well into the 8-bit theme but it also manages to do a lot with very simple elements.

My main technical goal is to use palettes to give the same set of images different meanings throughout the game by shifting the colors slightly -we'll see how that goes.

The premise of the game at this early stage is a journey into a shadowy parallel world.

Day 1 has gone quite well, though progress was a bit slower than I would have liked. Ive completed a tileset generator, and loading levels from file.

So last night I had an overwhelming sense of doubt about my idea. Its far too time-consuming to manage dynamic image palettes, since every time I change one palette I have to do the same for all the others AND still update all the images. It also became quite clear that all that work does not bring much benefit.

Ive since been trying to adapt what I've already done to scale things down while still resisting the urge to resort to a blind clone.

I've run into this sort of thing in other pyweeks -I think the problem is I feel the need to do some experimentation otherwise I wont find the idea interesting enough.

I've lost a precious day, but there may be time yet to get something going -KISS to the rescue!

Since there are so many things I didn't get done this is technically a DNF. I was working to the last hour trying to add more levels but it seems I bit off more than I could chew, especially since I was as busy as ever at work. Im not sure why but this pyweek seemed so much harder to me than my previous entries.

I am happy however with what I was able to put together, and I found working with low resolutions and individual pixels very appealing -Id like to get into pixel art once I get pyweek out of my system.

I actually ended up coding more features than I was able to find a place for in the level content, something I need to keep in mind in future. I had quite a good way of putting the levels together easily but I didn't leave myself enough time to take advantage of that.

Overall I think this entry does show progress compared to my previous entries (for one thing it has sound). Hopefully Im getting closer to the point where I can match results to intention without going through quite this much agony.

Im sharing this updated version, post pyweek. There are no gameplay changes. Instead the game starts at the main menu which I had disabled for debugging and a few lines of story.

I realize this comes way late but going through the game again I realize how ridiculously impossible it is to get to the end. Funny I managed it a few times on the last Saturday, sleep deprived and all.

The file is also about half the size of the original.