ayla~nonsense

Lost Your Marbles

Lead Game Programmer

    Overview

    A visual novel combined with a 2D marble game! Help Prota find her dog Minty by talking with the fantastical (and absurd) inhabitants of Pomegranate Village. Your dialogue choices in the overarching narrative are determined by the exits you take in the marble mazes.

    Bubbly letter spell out "Lost Your Marbles" on a checkerboard background.
    A character named Prota asks a cactus named Spiky Jon about her missing dog.
    A marble travels through a 2D maze below the heading "Choose the paper!"

    Development

    Lost Your Marbles was developed for Playdate Season 1. Some notable things I ended up building throughout the development process:

    • A custom mini physics engine super-optimized to the game's features, since running full physics at a decent frame rate on the Playdate was a challenge.

    • A branching narrative system with enough flexibility to allow the team's writers to deliver their story.

    • A visual-novel-esque dialogue system.

    • An in-game level editor with a custom baking and minification process so that levels could be developed quickly while still running at a smooth frame-rate.

    Reception

    Lost Your Marbles will be available on the Playdate handheld device in the very near future. Stay tuned!

    Credits

    Direction: David Bedard

    Writing: Kim Belair

    Design: Will Stacey

    Programming: Ayla Myers

    Art: Will Herring

    Sound and Music: Neha Patel

    Editing and Concept Art: Ariadne MacGillivray

    Editing: Sean Hennegan