Precise, beautiful PICO-8 games with Brook.p8
The Queer Games Bundle is a collection of nearly 600 items by LGBTQ+ creators and teams, nearly 400 of which are independent video games, all sold for just $60. I’m talking with creators from the bundle about their games and their making habits. Visit the bundle and consider buying it.
Brook.p8 has two great games in the Queer Games Bundle: Pushamo, which is a blocks-pushing game imagined in a full 2D space instead of just falling from above; and Flags for Friends, where you customize different queer flags based on customers — like a pirate who only loves the sea and a vampire whose gender is “ghoul.”
How long have you been making games?
I started making games in college, 6 years ago. I joined a local game jam, had a lot of fun and met some cool people. But it took 2 more years for me to really ramp up on doing game jams; there was a point I was consistently doing a jam a month for the better half of a year, which was a lot of fun but also there’s no way I could possibly replicate that pace now.
What tools do you like to use?
I use PICO-8, which is a fully stand-alone platform that I absolutely adore. It has several pretty harsh limitations built into the engine, 128x128 resolution, 6 colors, 32kb file size max, etc, with the idea that these limitations breed creativity. They also just make it really fun, and fast, to work in! It’s a bit niche, but I can’t imagine making games any other way now. It’s really important that the process of development is really fun, otherwise making games isn’t really sustainable and you’ll get burnt out.
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
I don’t really stick to a certain genre so much as I find an idea that really sticks with me, and I try to bring that to life instead. I’ll basically come up with a pitch, and come up with the rest from there. My most recent couple games are all wildly different from one another, but I’m proud of each of them for different reasons. With that said, I also admit I am really influenced by the games I’ve lately played. Pushamo was inspired by Mixolumia, Millennium Maximus was inspired by Kardboard Kings, and I’m working on a game now inspired by Yoku’s Island Express.
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
There’s a lot of aspects I really love! Starting with an idea and bringing it to life is just so fulfilling; the process of coding and tweaking things to your liking is really fun; the many “aha!” moments from coming up with clever ideas, and it feels incredibly satisfying to watch someone enjoy something you made.
The worst part about making games, is making the game. It is technically challenging, long and drawn out, and if you aren’t careful a lonely and draining time. It’s a miracle any game is finished.
“[P]ride flags are beautiful because queerness is inherently a beautiful thing. They’re powerful because queerness is powerful.”
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
Hmm. I’ve played a lot of awesome games lately, and I like to think I kind of absorb things from all of them. I just finished CrossCode, which was super fun and has gorgeous pixel art. But I think the last game that really embedded into my mind was Inscryption, which is absolutely incredible for reasons that can’t even be explained without spoilers.
Flags for Friends is honestly a great pixel art tool! Did you put it together from scratch?
I did build it from scratch, and that was particularly challenging. I had to both come up with a design and interface that works with such low-fi tech, and to implement it into a functional editor. The core functionality, of drawing on the screen and saving it in memory, wasn’t too bad, but in order for it to be intuitive and presentable it takes a lot of extra features and care all around. I actually wrote a two-part devlog about exactly this!
Do you have a favorite design client from the game? I like the rhyming vampire.
Hmm, if I had to pick I’d have to say Kiwi. Gardener, Kiwi, and June are all crossover queer characters from games that mean a lot to me, but I have to give points to Wandersong for being influential to me at a time where I didn’t have things so figured out. I had a lot of fun writing dialogue for each of them though, which I don’t get to do often since all my stats are in coding.
My favorite prompt goes to “aromantic pirate pride”, because it’s a fun idea.
The game highlights how beautiful the different flags are. Are there any you especially like, in or out of the game?
I really love all of these flags because what they represent is beautiful. Flags, be it pride flags or country flags or else, only really have meaning and power based on what they represent. I feel that the design and its meaning are intrinsically linked; and that pride flags are beautiful because queerness is inherently a beautiful thing. They’re powerful because queerness is powerful. Similarly I really like flags inspired by niche identities! Like, your gender is “cat”? Hell yeah! I guess that was the energy I channeled for this whole game. (For the record, my gender is girl with PICO-8 mixed in.)
“It’s really important that the process of development is really fun, otherwise making games isn’t really sustainable and you’ll get burnt out.”
And a sneaky one about your game Pushamo: Were there any surprising challenges to get the grid and blocks working? It’s so clever!
So sneaky! Yeah, there were several issues I ended up running into with the grid and blocks in Pushamo. The most difficult bug I ever had was based on shapes being destroyed twice, which ended up happening when you perform a clear and split the block into two distinct parts. It wasn’t a very common edge case but it’s super obvious that it’s wrong.
A common thing for games to do is separate the visuals from the physics — when you push a block, the grid immediately updates, but the player and block both take time to visually enter the next square. This is useful because lots of things can happen in between actions, and if the physics aren’t clear it could get messy fast.
Is there anything you haven’t explored yet that you’d like to work on?
At this point I feel I’m pretty good about gauging what is within my skillset. There’s a couple ideas I really like, but couldn’t realistically do justice. I think it’d be really fun to expand Millennium Maximus, because “yugioh where you play as the villain” is a really stupid and goofy and fun idea, but it presents a host of writing and worldbuilding and art challenges I wouldn’t overcome, plus I don’t think the PICO-8 environment would be the best fit for such a game.
The game that I’m working on now is a ball-physics platformer game; a sort of cross between Celeste and pinball. I think it’s a fun premise, and it lets me work in areas I haven’t done very much with between level design and a basic and simple story.
