How this was made

This is officially the first game I have ever finished on my own so I think it's probably a good idea to document how this was made.

ORIGIN

Someone special to me sent me a bunch of poems that she thought would be cool to visualize. By nature I am more comfortable drawing than I am programing but games and their development have always intrigued me. That and someone beat me to the punch on turning a bunch of poems into comics.  So I thought one of the poems must be good to turn into something interactive.

Bitsy caught my eye as a light weight tool to create a game. The limitations actually appealed to me since having them means I could only do so much and would not get overwhelmed. Plus the games that have come out of it were just great.  Seriously, Under A Star Called Sun is still one of my favorite recent game experiences. All bitsy games have that, I used Stumbleupon in the 2000's feel that really hasn't been captured since.

So with all that in mind I decided to try my hand at making this.

BREAKDOWN
In order to get started, I went ahead and broke down the poem. I did this on the original page and just brought it into my normal drawing program.

I have done art for some game jams in the past, but I have not learned how to do pixel art. It's on my to do list but I do enjoy just sketching first and trying to back fit it in. It doesn't always work and takes more time than if I just did it the other way but still happy with this attempt.

GAME PROGRAM
Once all the art was in it was easy to add dialogue where I needed and make everything run. That was until I realized that you could only have avatar. The entire point of a lot of my prep was designed around this and for whatever reason I had not dug into the tools enough. I ended up going to the wonderful community on the bitsy discord. They pointed me towards a number of different hacks and how to use them which was super cool. I had 'avatar by room' and 'directional flip' hacks added when I learned about Borksy. This helpful tool allowed me to add controller support, transparent backgrounds and a few other nice touches.

Once it was done, I sent it out to a few friends for testing. I realized that I needed to add more than one exit from room to room and make some slight tweaks to some rooms. There is more I would expand on if I had time to make it a little more open but I don't think it needed it.

VERSION 1.0
After the testing I went ahead and gave this as a gift to the person who had originally suggested making a poem visual. I think it's still out there on a USB drive. I also went ahead and made a box with box art to make it feel like a full game. This will probably be the only physical copy that will ever be made. It has a spelling error and some unique quirks that will only exist on this version. I never really planned on releasing this to a wider audience and because of that I will never show the box art or version 1.0. It belongs to someone else and she can do whatever she wants with it.

That being said she did have one thought after playing. Outside of the joy she expressed from the game, she did lament that at the end of the game, the player cannot return to the person who let them out of their cage out of love. I had never considered this. The poem has a feeling to me of letting something go even if you feel strongly for it. But everyone has their own interpretations. But with that in mind I decided that I should go back in and fix that someday. 

VERSION 1.2
Well, I am now at the point where I wanted to show this off.  Some of the original testers were asking me where they could play it or if they could show it to someone else. So I went ahead and loaded this up and made some changes including the original plan of an additional ending. I made some other changes to in order to making sure the 1.0 is still its own thing. That's just  the way I need to calm my brain.

Another reason I was holding back was due to me having no ownership over this poem. Doug Anderson wrote these words and I believe he's still alive today. I haven't tried to reach out to him. I know that if I put this up he may want it taken down. And if he does I will absolutely do it. But at the end of the day this is a way to spread the beauty of poetry to people who might not normally pick up a poetry book or to introduce people who like poetry to the fact that games can be anything.

CLOSING
Well I hope if you read this, you enjoyed it. And if you have any questions or thoughts I would always love to hear them. 

Until next time,
DJMSpaint