Isocraft

Controls

Arrow Keys - Horizontal Movement
E and D - Vertical Movement
S - Place or destroy selected block
F - Open or close Block Menu
Z - Debug Menu (Coordinates and Name of Block)
X (Hold) - Quit

Description

This game is a very stripped down version of Minecraft, removing everything that is not essential to get to the very core: building. There are no mobs, no survival, not even a player character. Instead you are given 9 blocks, a 20x20x10 area and a few songs to listen to while you create.

Creator's Comment

While it might not be an impressive length for others, this is my first project I've finished after working on it for over a week. I've always struggled with staying on one project for even more than a few days. I came really close to achieving this with my last project, "Ashes", but burnt out at the very tail end of development. For finally achieving this feat, I'd like to thank some of my friends for showing interest in this project and helping me with ideas/bug fixes, especially "Luigi" (not his real name).

The initial spark for this project was a video in my YouTube recommends called "Is 8-bit Minecraft Possible?" (all links mentioned in credits). After watching the video, I came away inspired to try this challenge myself, using my (limited) Pico-8 knowledge. I started by making the tile system and had it working 2 days in. At that point, I had no idea what I wanted this game to be. I initially wanted it to make it a survival game like Minecraft but had no idea how to make mining work as you cannot see your character through blocks in an isometric perspective.

The day after thinking about that and having no ideas, YouTube managed to once again inspire me, this time with a video about Minecraft on a calculator. Unlike the first video, this project was actually done, and had gameplay. The gameplay was simple: build. I don't know why this idea never came across to me, it is probably the most important element of Minecraft, but Minecraft has changed so much since it's began that this part of it is kind of muddled with so many systems. Criticisms of Minecraft aside, I had a clear idea of what the goal was.

I managed to develop the player building within a day, but was then caught up in assignments. This continued for the rest of the week, until I finally had some time on the weekend. This time was mostly spent experimenting with procedural generation, which in the end I decided to cut as it just made the building more annoying as you had to clear out the area first. If you go through the code, you can find the function for this feature still in the game. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Finally after all of this, the game neared a finished state. The last few additions were the title screen(?), the music and the transition feature. If you're reading this, thank you. I feel like this might be too much but I'm not the only one who watches those 20 minute long devlogs on YouTube right?

Credits

Game Developer - Alula
Q&A - Luigi (Not his real name)
Music - Originally made by C418
Inspiration - Inkbox and the Science Elf (more details in Creator's Comment)