I Call Upon the BEES!

Welcome to I Call Upon the BEES!

Welcome to my Ludum Dare 55 entry. This one was an experiment to move away from Unity and try a fantasy console, in this case WASM-4, and get a chance to write in Rust.

Play as a beekeeper in a simple, short 5 level 2D platformer. After not dedicating the full time to the jam, features were only beginning to come together, but they start to show some promise.

Controls

• ←/→ — Move left/right
• ↑ — Jump
• X/Space — Summon bees to cursor location

Tools

• Pixel Studio

Credit

Credit to Yana for the palette.

Credit to 04 for the title card font.

Thoughts

WASM-4 provides a fairly low-level API, meaning much of the time was spent creating basic functionality such as limited frame rates, sprite sheets, static lifecycle management, and then editing levels in text.

The bees were done in a ECS style, with seeming memory limits around 500. It'd be fun to push this idea further, seeing where the computation limits are for a fantasy console.

In retrospect I would have liked to dedicate more time to the jam and see the idea through more thoroughly, adding more depth, artwork, sounds, and game feel.