Game Sketch on Bitsy | introspection

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For our Game Jam, I created an interactive narrative game called introspection where players can read through my thoughts as I go through existential dread. This “stream of consciousness” style game doesn’t really have an end goal; it’s more of an exploratory practice aimed at working through thoughts and feelings.

Like a lot of the assignments for this class, I felt very anxious trying to get the assignment done. On top of this, I had 4 assignments due from Sunday to Wednesday. *sobs*

I didn’t have any compelling ideas for a text-based game for quite a while and wasn’t sure where to go visually. Don’t even get me to started on my fear of game engines…

Brainstorming

So, since I knew how to use p5.js from Creation & Computation, I looked to their showcase for some inspiration… *cough cough code to repurpose*

I found this game on the p5.js showcase, and was instantly drawn to its simple premise and beautiful graphics.

My goal was to copy the code and redesign the game and graphics so that the user could make a Congolese dish instead. I also wanted to fashion the kitchen to mine.

However….

There are thousands of lines of codes in this game that would have to be modified!!! In the interest of time, I opted for a Bitsy game, which I covered in my first Game Research blog. When you first open it, Bitsy looks like this:

Bitsy Inspiration

Creating the Game

Two days before the game jam, I had a serious case of existential dread in the middle of the night. I’ve been dealing with this on and off since I was a kid, but that case was particularly bad. Someone close to me at the time suggested reading Sartre, but I decided to write down my thoughts instead.

Once the game was completed, I found some free music on YouTube, and used a Slowed + Reverb generator to give it a more a t m o s p h e r i c vibe (see above image).

And that was it!

Play The Game

Click on the window below, press the spacebar and use your arrow keys.