1-1(bit)

Dying is Feedback. Death is information. 

1-1(bit) is a cognitive platformer made in Pulp for the Panic Playdate. The platforms are invisible and the player builds a mental map of the level layout through traversal and observation. 

Players can reveal the level using the B button. Players also tend not to do that. 

Inspiration

This game was inspired by a similar project shown at Fantastic Arcade in Austin, TX years ago. It was a beautiful wooden arcade wall mount that consisted of a joystick and a single, vertical strip of red LEDs. As you navigated the level you 'viewed' it 1-pixel slice at a time by observing your dot's position. 1-1(bit) is based on this concept and built on a 'Smooth Movement demo' created by Nick Sr. and released on the Playdate Squad Discord.

Purpose

This game comprises the first world of the upcoming Off-Planet Dreams to be released 9/24/24. An updated version of 1-1(bit) will follow that release with some bonus levels and will include the data.json source code (which can be loaded into Pulp) explicitly so other developers can take a look at the internals of the game in order to understand how to use smooth movement in their games and/or to build more levels in this structure. 

DEMO

Demo v 4.1.3 is up and I consider it more or less complete as a standalone. Unless I find bugs, this will be the last update for a while as the primary infrastructure is in place now. 

Start Screen has New Game, Continue and Deaths options. The demo will now save your progress as you go and there is a level select option under the World icon. There will eventually be more worlds and you'll be able to select any levels you have reached through gameplay. There is also an option to turn on/off the music backing track. (It's a banger composed in Pulp by Eva Boyd, who has previously worked on the ART series games as well!)

The B button menu now includes the ability to go back to the Start screen which keeps your level progress, but if you Menu out of the game back to the Playdate game selection, your progress will be saved as well. 

Time to build out the rest of the game!

(v4.1.3 fixes a minor bug in v4.1.2 that let revealed platforms be persistent within a session)

How to Play

This demo can be played on the Playdate but can also be downloaded and played on the Simulator included in the Playdate SDK

Download the SDK to get the Simulator here: Develop for Playdate 

Then follow the instructions (to run on PC or Mac) here: Inside Playdate

Not sure how to Sideload on the Playdate? Helpful video below!