itch.io

This game affected me emotionally more than any game I’ve played since Journey. What amazing achievement. Gameplay as art, and in under 1k of code.

That was an enjoyable metroidvania game even without the amazing achievement of squeezing it into 1K of code. Great work.

I completed the game with seven green squares and a time of 1010.8.

Phenomenal!

Thank you.

I have posted the annotated source code of the latest version that explains how the game works and tricks I used to squeeze it into 484 characters.

https://dredds.itch.io/billabong/devlog/729963/annotated-source-code-for-the-latest-version

I managed to squeeze a lot more space out of the code (about 40 characters!) and used it to improve the visuals and still reduce the overall character count to 484. The new version is available on the project page.

Thank you. I think it would work well on an iPad and even support more than two players. Something I’ll have to experiment with in the future.

Thank you. When I noticed the two Truchet tiles in the Pico-8 character set (characters 254 and 255), I couldn’t resist using them.

Thank you. I was surprised too!

When I saw how the flood fill algorithm and the narrow, diagonal channels created by the Truchet tiles combine to create really pleasing flows, I just had to double down on the concept and eliminate anything that got in the way of implementing it in under 500 characters. It was a challenge, but I am very happy with the end result.

Thank you. I plan to post a devlog article with commented source explaining the tricks I used.

I love it. I collected all the numbers in 260 turns.

This is very good. It’s really impressive how much game you squeezed into 500 characters.

I’ve uploaded a new version that fixes an annoying bug. The game would waste a turn if you clicked/tapped on the score panel. Now it detects and ignores input on the score panel.

Happened to me too. I was so surprised by the size of my code. Then I noticed I was looking at tokens, and found I had used over 800 characters. Luckily I had features I could remove and lots of scope for squeezing the size down.

Thank you for your kind words, everyone. I really appreciate it.

Very good! And very creepy.

I got 13 elements, but alas cannot work out how to get any further.

Incredible!

The highest score I’ve managed is 36.

I really enjoyed wandering around the garden trying to coax the plants to grow into interesting shapes.

Thank you.