An Awesome Discovery
A downloadable project
My entry for the GB Pixel Art Jam 2023, theme “An Awesome Discovery.”
Dedicated to the wasp society currently residing in the casing of our living room’s roller shutter.
An homage to two of my strongest early video game influences: the original Nintendo GAME BOY™ Classic as a platform and the enticing genre of RPGs. For me both would find thrillingly together in Capcom’s 1990 Gargolye’s Quest.
The user interface in this image is a nod to Might and Magic III – the first RPG that I played on PC.
Clinging to the idea of having a diverse party of bug adventurers working in union I renounced the joke to copy & paste the same wasp portrait 5 times; granted, that would have spared me some pains when it came to reducing the total tile count (in case of the Jam limited to 192 tiles) – a phase during which I eliminated 39 unique tiles one by one; and well, that took me several hours. (Note to myself: please make use of the tile counter way earlier.)
Right in Time. Not! (Gotcha.)
I completed this picture almost 2 days after the Jam’s submission deadline. For some unapparent reason I estimated the Jam would end Tuesday night (instead of Sunday night… on my position on the globe, at least). I’d learn about my mistake Saturday night… right before bedtime. First half of my Sunday was then claimed by my last-minute tax-filings (and thinking about how to tackle the Jam’s theme… in parallel); afterwards I transitioned right into pushing pixels in Aseprite – which I had just recently installed to join the Jam. Love it! Then 40 minutes before the deadline I admitted to myself that there was no way that I could complete my entry in time.
So I used my Monday’s and Tuesday’s spare time for image completion, tile reduction, and setting up this page… .
Technical Requirements
- sized 160 × 144 px
- 192 different tiles (of 8 × 8 px) at max
- 4 shades of green
Download
Comments
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Hey, this is pretty cool, the insect designs are great, and tapping into a different detail for each portrait is pretty cool.
The room being represented on the map to the right shows the value in the drawing.
I was surprised when I looked at the jam page and there was yet another new pixel art, but it was good to have taken some time to look.
Hi & thanks kindly for your reply!
I surely had a lot of fun with gathering that insect party! When I was forced to minimize the number of unique tiles I hardly touched any part of the portraits, but rather reduced that cake. Previously it was a ring cake on a plate but it was also very “tile consuming.” Overall the reduced look better matched the rest of that “3D view” anyway.
I’m glad the map gets some love, too! Another consumer of precious tile ressource – but hey, what’s a RPG without a map?! Maps ♥! And while I’ve never seen a mini map visualizing the party’s covered path I felt the apparent erratic nature of our insect friends deserved a recognition.
Yeah, surprisingly it was decided to include my very belated entry… and that actually sweetened the rest of my week!
Cheers!