Really nice, scientific game about making fake neon lights. :) If you check wiki, only red-orange is a Neon color. Other lights that weren't Neon were just called Neon due to the similar bright colors. Haha, but indeed the game's content would be lacking if red was the only color in game. So gameplay-wise this works. :D Interesting concept and amazing art! This was all done within 1-2 weeks?
Viewing post in Lam's Untitled Neon jam comments
Hey! Thanks for playing our game! I wouldn't call them "fake neon lights".
It was actually for more than gameplay reasons why we decided to include other colours for our neon lights. Part of it was thematic as well. And part of it was educational. We wanted to show that what people know as "neon lights" were originally because those lights were filled with neon gas, which as you said, produce a bright red colour. However, "neon signs" still refer to all the different colours that people might be more familiar with. As Wiki does say: ""Neon" is used to denote the general type of lamp, but neon gas is only one of the types of tube gases principally used in commercial application." So we wanted to focus more on the lamp type for the theme, not necessarily a light that uses Neon. To illustrate this in the game, we added the gas filling mini game where Mr. Lam does say he used "Argon" and "Neon" for the first light you make. It isn't super common to find a light that uses purely neon nowadays as adding another gas makes it more efficient. For the second light you make, he doesn't use neon at all and uses a mix of argon and helium. The light burns a bright blue as there is a drop of mercury added that will vaporise when the light is turned on. This creates a brilliant blue as mercury gas mixtures emits a good deal of ultra violet light. The helium, as Mr. Lam mentions, is to make the neon light work well even if the weather is cold. Neon lights are affected by the cold and helium helps the mercury stay in vapor form when it gets cold.
I don't think other lights were called "Neon" due to similar bright colours. But "neon" was the first gas discovered to produce a bright red. Originally, these tubes filled with gases were just called geissler tubes. (wiki defines them as "an early gas discharge tube used to demonstrate the principles of electrical glow discharge"). Same principle that was later applied to neon lighting. Neon was discovered by scientists William Ramsay and Morris W. Travers who found neon's electrical discharge created a brilliant red glow in their geissler tubes. After that, people discovered (not sure who) flourescent tube coatings that could affect the colour of the light. As well as different gas mixtures. But the neon name stuck. So I think neon comes from the fact those lights just originally contained neon and the rest was an extension of the discovery. It's a bit of a misnomer I guess, "Neon Light". Similar to how blackboards can be green and not just black.
And yes! This was all done within the time frame. We actually started a little late as we weren't sure whether we wanted to do the jam. 51 hours of coding logged in gamemaker. (Our programmer nyveon is a real MVP for us to get this ambitious game done. We weren't sure if the bending mechanics were possible to figure out in time.)