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. I was the sole programmer for the game. Some of my favorite things to code were:

  • A custom mini physics engine optimized for marble gameplay.

  • 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.

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