GlitchFlaps

Glitch Flaps

What if we never developed screens? What if LCDs and CRTs were a pipe dream and mechanical displays remained the primary display method?

Glitch Flaps is a teeny tiny entry into the Falling Block Jam. I hadn't planned to join until I saw the optional theme/vibe of "Analog Memory" and since I've been in a bit of an older tech phase recently and have been obsessed with flip dot and split flap displays, this made me want to make a digital one.

So after just intending to use it as inspiration to make a split flap component. I ended up making a tiny game around it as well to justify partaking in the Jam.

Boring wafle stuff:

Originally I was just going to use the flaps for the main game area, but then do more traditional overlay UI. But where's the fun in that? So instead I ended up doing everything with split flaps. Whilst the character set on some flaps are different subsets of icons and characters, each display is being honest, no jumping ahead and changing the order, they cycle their full character set just like a real split lap display would need to.  Added some back-lighting to help adda  bit of clarity between bullets and falling blocks (look I imagined an AU where we don't have displays, we still have lights). And imagined a big crank wheel at the front of the console where you'd have to spin to control the player movement.

With the exception of the long flat line separating the player and main game area, all visuals are within a single 256x256 sprite sheet, I even have 7 empty flap slots I can use for additional icons/characters if needed.

I think using some more bespoke icons for some flaps, and more organised sub-sets for each display unit you could actually create a lot of compelling games using this as a display limitation. I'd be interested how smaller flap sets would impact delay  and the impact that would have favouring turn based vs real-time play.

Maybe In the future I'll try something else with this, or make a flip-dot based game display instead.