PICO-8 Devlog 6: Calming down

Two kinds of chilling out needs to happen at this point: I need to shift my aesthestic direction so I can stand to play my own game and I need to take a bit of a break from the whole process.

Objective

The "exciting" VFX and SFX for the game were feeling on-track in terms of how I'd imagined them — if anything they were extremely tame — but I was finding them disorienting rather than satisfying.

I wanted to retain the juice of the interactions, but make them feel more positive.

Process and results

I tried various things to keep that '90s vibe while softening the experience: make the SFX less harsh, change the parameters of the shockwave etc, but nothing felt like it was moving in the right direction. To the extent that the FX became more tolerable they ceased to support the aesthetic I'd envisioned.

Anyway, "more tolerable" is not really what I'm aspiring to here, is it? I need them to be actively enjoyable.

Somehow or other during my sound experiments I came up with more tonal effects for hitting the blocks, and gave a different pitch to each event depending on whether the block was being hit for the first time or smashed. This provided the gameplay with a certain melody and rhythm that I decided to lean into.

I extended my existing method for managing the bricks' damage states and gave them an additional phase before they break. Now they break on the third hit rather than the second, and each hit's sound effect shifts up in tone.

I haven't actually checked because I'm going on instinct, but I assume the tonal intervals more or less fit the circle of fifths in a major chord. Landing on the exit makes a sound that's like an arpeggio of the chord, ending an octave up (I think), creating a kind of "success noise".

My musical theory is not strong!

The next piece of the puzzle was adding background music that's basically (again, I think), alternating notes a fifth apart and played as alternating versions of each note an octave apart, providing a very obvious rhythmic pattern.

So we end up with something that has a bit of a rhythm action vibe: the sounds all relate in ways that are harmonious and satisfying regardless of when they occur and it still feels like it might fit into the Rez / ravey techno space I orginally conceived.

Screen-shake is reserved for when the player tries to move into an adjacent wall, so that makes sense because it's negative feedback for an "illegal" action.

Overall, a good direction of travel.

The current state of the game is here.

Oh, and I got it running on my rgcubexx, which was another key goal:

Next steps

I might want to explore diverging from the techno theme completely, and play with different "skins" for the same gameplay. Lean into the tonal thing and have blocks that chime like bells to build up polyphonoud chords? A more nature-themed approach where blocks are hedges that explode in little puffs of leaves? Themed levels might be possible, as I have plenty of space left in the sprite an sound banks.

But for now this feels like a good place to take a hiatus from this project. I'm happy with what I've achieved and it feels like a natural place to pause.

My work has been quite intense recently for one reason and another, and I have a close family member with serious health issues, so I don't have the energy or inclination to make steady progress for the forseeable future. Better to consciously put it on hold than to let it start to feel like a burden.

I'm sure ideas will continue to percolate and I expect I'll return to the project with renewed enthusiasm in the not-too-distant future.

END