Experimental games made using the Bitsy engine

Bitsy is a game-making tool created by Adam le Doux (https://ledoux.itch.io/bitsy) that enables users to create small, pixel-y virtual worlds. Although primarily used for making, what are in essence, walking simulators with attractive 8-bit graphical leanings, there have been plenty of examples of people making wholly different genres of games within the engine. Here, I will attempt to catalogue a few that I find rather intriguing.

Time To Dig Out That Ugly Christmas Jumper by jonosandilands

A hybrid between a maze and what could be described as a “knitting simulator”, Ugly Christmas Jumper has the player knit multiple jumpers whilst text occasionally pops up talking about the patterns you are currently knitting. Perhaps it might be worth making it a Christmas tradition to play this?

Skeletal DOS Dreams — DISK 1 by *triage

It’s Windows 95! But in Bitsy! You play as what I can only assume to be a sentient, human personification of a computer mouse and explore the inner workings of a computer whilst being helped along the way by your guide “Decovery”, the computer’s cloud who happens to have a sweet, motherly personality.

This game has a rather dark undertone to it, the music (a remix of Brian Eno’s Windows 95 sounds), whilst calming, carries a sinister, cold vibe to it that nicely underscores the odder aspects of this game, such as the folders screen, wherein the folders you can interact with contain strings of numbers followed by what appears to be diary entries from someone held captive. “At least they could have painted the walls.”, “I was trapped here for too long.”

This is also one of the few Bitsy games I’ve played (although there is probably more) that has a 3D-ish section to it, in this game, it’s a digital cave filled with unused remnants of your hard drive who, when spoken to, seem slightly bitter about their abandonment. There’s no exit from the cave other than the way you came, a window at the end of the cave seeming to hint at a glimmer of hope for those who are still dwelling there.

Overall, if you’re looking for something with a slightly darker vibe to it than most Bitsy games, I recommend this.

Silence Would Be Better by Cephalopodunk

You play a radio tuner in this one. Simply use the left and right arrow keys to pick a station and use the up arrow to tune in. Then you can sit back and enjoy the odd and humorous captions that float from the radio’s speakers, including quite a few lampoonings of popular music. (The “Call Me Maybe” parody that you’re occasionally subjected to gave me quite a few chuckles.)

The interesting thing about this game, other than the concept, is that it was built using both Bitsy and Tracery, a tool primarily used to make bots (among other things. The website does note that it’s been used for games before) and I would love to find out how it was implemented specifically to this game.

Midnight Dungeon by PixelArtM

A ZX-Spectrum style roguelike-ish puzzle game where you navigate through a small dungeon to look for treasure. You encounter a couple of enemies (who can’t kill you, so don’t worry) whilst navigating the dungeon for objects to find to aid in your quest for this treasure.

I loved the colour scheme for this one, in addition to the puzzle aspects. We need more puzzle games in Bitsy.

BitSnake by Sean S. LeBlanc

It’s Snake, in Bitsy! Surely I don’t need to explain how to play this one, grab the fruit whilst trying to avoid hitting the walls or backing into yourself, which causes you to become an ouroboros and eat yourself. There’s some rather nice animation on the snake for this one, and the colour palette is pleasing. Worth playing if you want to re-live those memories of playing this on your phone, or… wherever you happened to play it for the first time.

Stars Below by Sarah Gould

Extremely pretty cutscene-like poem-game where you only need to use the up and down arrow keys to move and watch the scene emerge before your eyes. I cannot empathise enough how pretty the art is in this, and the music just adds another layer of beauty to it. It’s extremely short and well worth the minute or so it takes to play/watch.

Amethyst Horologist, Radical Archaeologist by Cephalopodunk

Another puzzler! This one has you taking the role of the title character as she uses time-travel to find interesting artifacts from the building site of a soon to be opened shopping mall. The different areas were so interesting to explore despite mostly being all the length of one room, and the different characters in each were interesting to talk to, including a rather grim-reaper looking druid who guards the same site in each different era somehow. The game’s sense of humor was great as well.

Final by Mozz

Creepypasta in Bitsy form. This short but spooky game tells the tale of a kid and his friend who end up playing a haunted video game. Whilst I couldn’t understand exactly what was happening in front of me as I played, I did feel rather unnerved, the apparent references to the creepypasta “The King Come Down” adding to the creep factor quite a bit. The art style is grim and bleak, with glitchy segments and a scene involving what seems to be ink or water spilling from the TV. I’d recommend checking this if you’re looking for a horror Bitsy game to try.

Hell by onion

A rather light-hearted romp through hell, this seriously reminded me of a modern-day comedy equivalent of Dante’s Inferno, only instead of Virgil, you’re guided along by the devil himself, who, unsurprisingly, acts as unhelpful as humanely possible, spewing out dialogue in the tone of a teenager snarking at their parents, which made his every interaction a pleasure to read through. The different classes of sinners gave me some good chuckles a few times, and the minions of hell were surprisingly adorable!