XTRIS: The Silly Game That Grew Up

XTRIS for Playdate has been in development since July 2024. I've spent long hours creating, refining, and polishing this game to be the very best it can be! And now, on the eve of its release, I wanted to take some time to look back and consider how we even got here in the first place.

Humble Beginnings

XTRIS originally started out as a game for PICO-8. Created originally in 24 hours for TweetTweetJam 8, XTRIS was made with only 479 characters of code. After seeing a promising amount of interest in the game from my community, I spent the next week fleshing out the concept into a full game with 10 levels, local high score tracking, and some music composed by the incredible LeafLet!

And that, honestly, was where the project stayed - just a silly concept about moving around within a tetronimo and collecting Xs. I didn't give the game much more thought after that, until July 2024, when I started growing an interest in learning to develop games for the Playdate!

mid-round screenshot of XTRIS for the PICO-8 mid-round screenshot of XTRIS for the PICO-8

From PICO-8 to Playdate

Playdate was a natural next step for me - I had been creating PICO-8 games since 2021, and in those three years I had grown really comfortable programming games in Lua. I grew fond of developing for consoles with limitations, and the Playdate's 1-bit screen really intrigued me. I needed a project to make that would allow me to explore the SDK without committing to a large scope. I remembered XTRIS, and decided a port would be the perfect way to get familiar!

Within a couple weeks I had a playable prototype, although it was still missing all of the bells and whistles that made it feel like a real "game". I was about to put the project down again - I felt satisfied with what I had learned of the Playdate SDK and didn't feel like I needed to take the project any further. Once again though, the community where I had been sharing updates had shown an amount of interest in the game. That sense of accountability and excitement is extremely motivating to me so I resolved to keep going.

early build of XTRIS for the Playdate early build of XTRIS for the Playdate

Polish, Polish, Polish

I spent the next 5 months polishing XTRIS. I squeezed every bit of experience I had from the previous three and a half years into making XTRIS the best I could possibly make it.

I had a lot of help and support from the Playdate Squad Discord. This community of gamers and developers are seriously amazing. There is so much positivity, advice, and enthusiasm being shared daily for this cute yellow console! If you're not yet a part of the community, I highly recommend joining.

The game really felt real once I started adding more visual effects. Pixel Composer was invaluabale to me for creating all sorts of flashy effects - the fire, the screen transitions, and even the launch animation were all created with Pixel Composer. Designing the animations with keyframes in the software was so much faster than hand-drawing each frame.

recent footage of XTRIS playing the level "tetronimo" recent footage of XTRIS playing the level "tetronimo"

Getting Some Help

As much as I've grown in my game development abilities, I have yet to feel like I really have a handle on audio. I feel overwhelmed every time I need to approach audio for a new project. And so, I got some help.

LemonPoppyseedGames is a game developer and friend of mine that I've known for a number of years. He and I have collaborated in the past, and I was thrilled to ask him to wield his compositional skills once again for XTRIS! He graciously agreed, and cooked up two AMAZING tracks for us - a very playful and chill bossa nova piece for the menus, and a gritty, tension building piece for playing the standard game. I think they came out wonderfully! You can download the OST to listen to for fun on the itch.io page.

Then I met Jordan Carroll in the Playdate Squad Discord. He mentioned that he was looking to wield his voice for commissions, and after listening to his work for Eli Piilonen's Trackminia, I knew that XTRIS would absolutely blossom with a strong bitcrushed Announcer. He sent me over some takes for a glossary of words I provided and I absolutely fell in love.

With some assistance from Kenney's free audio assets, we had a really gritty soundscape that perfectly matched the intensity that I was looking for from XTRIS!

Designing for Accessibility

Many people I know have chronic illnesses or disabilities, and as such it feels personally important to me to make sure that the game can be played by as many people as possible. While designing the game, I was keeping accessibility in mind!

XTRIS respects Playdate's "Reduce Flashing" feature by turning off most animations and flashy behavior. XTRIS gameplay with Reduce Flashing turned on
Adjust the sounds in the game to your liking - turn on and off the clicks, beeps, boops, and voices to suit your listening needs! XTRIS gameplay with Reduce Flashing turned on
Play "Zen Mode", a timer-free version of XTRIS that allows you to collect Xs without pressure. XTRIS gameplay with Reduce Flashing turned on
Use Playdate Mirror to use your PC keyboard or XInput controllers to operate the Playdate!

Future work

There are some shortcomings of XTRIS - the first and foremost being that the game design eventually encourages random button mashing, instead of intentional directional choice. To address this, I'm beginning work on a 2.0 release plan that will introduce more game mechanics that discourage button mashing! This is definitely an area of growth and experiential learning for me, and I'm excited to dive into that design space.

Another regret of mine is that the current game doesn't allow for much skill expression - once top players hit the skill ceiling, there's not much opportunity for newer players to swoop in and upset the leaderboards. This is because the game is on a strict 60-second timer with no way to extend the duration - which puts a hard limit on the physical possible amount collected (although players have already far exceed my expectations!). This can be addressed through an additional game mode more akin to rae's HEXA - allowing the timer to extend its duration as a reward for successful gameplay. I also have ideas and plans for this for a 2.0 release, so stay tuned!!