This only was my second jam, and the first by myself. My first jam was with a friend just a little over a month ago, and it went great. One of the ideas we talked about then was to explore cellular automata as a game play mechanic. We couldn’t then, but since that’s an idea that has been on my mind for years now, I used the 1-bit jam as the kick in the pants I needed.
It really made sense, cellular automata are binary; each cell is either on or off. I like the way these very simple systems can yield very complicated behaviors and beautiful results with a simple set of rules. The same way that the minimalism of a black/white restriction can help focus an art piece, be it a photograph or a video-game.
When the theme - Tower - was revealed, everything fit into place. I had already been thinking about ways to model a little society and introducing resource management to the classic neighbor-based algorithms we see in cellular automata. So with Tower, it became obvious: a stratified society, stacked vertically. Strata