I’m currently in the early stages of making a Bitsy game!
I recently got introduced to Bitsy through the works of Cecile Richard, and found them to be really cool and moving experiences. I was particularly impressed by how evocative and immersive Bitsy games can be; the limited mechanical and technical restrictions of the Bitsy editor are positive creative constraints for a game designer wanting to make really unique narrative experiences.
After my initial exposure to this exciting new world of Bitsy games, I felt inspired to start making one myself…and so I did! While having a mess around in the Bitsy editor to get a feel for making basic tile and sprite assets, my mind wandered back to the announcement trailer for the upcoming game Season, which has this really cool opening sequence of the player character recording the sounds of a nearby dragonfly.
Although the use of microphones as a gameplay mechanic is not particularly new, they’re often used as a means of boosting the player’s auditory percepttion or awareness (the directional mic in Metal Gear Solid 2 + 3 is a good example of this), rather than as a means of capturing or cataloguing the environmental sounds happening around the player. With these thoughts in mind and taking a hefty dose of inspiration from Season, I thought that making a small game based around field recording could lend itself well to making for a short, fun and personal Bitsy game experience.
So, here’s what I’ve got planned out so far. The rough structure I have in mind is to have the player start by checking in with their game dev team to see what sounds they need for their project, before collecting their equipment and heading outdoors to start recording. I’m thinking of having the player go to visit three different locations, where they have to record a sound from the environment. Once all the required sounds have been captured, the player then heads back to their studio computer in order to upload their sounds into the game. Here’s the opening scene of the player’s room/studio:
The player’s humble abode, complete with field recorder, headphones, microphone and batteries on the right. I need to change the field recorder sprite (top) to look more distinct from the batteries (bottom).
I want to make this a highly-idealised and rose-tinted view of a typical day of freelance game audio, so there’s no software crashes to worry about, or pesky version control software issues to wrestle with. Instead, it’s all about trying to capture that joy and excitement of exploring the outdoors with a recorder in-hand and having lots fun and Bob Ross' style happy accidents along the way!
I’m still learning the tools and editor workflow (and crucially, the audio implementation) as I go, so progress will likely be a bit on the slow side for the time being, but I’ll aim to post (hopefully timely) updates on Twitter/Instagram every now and then once I’ve completed a new section of the game or made a decent chunk of new progress. The aim is to keep this as small and tightly hemmed in scope-wise as possible so that I can actually complete it!