Basil's out sniffing around and scattering dandelions again. Oh look, there's a cave. I wonder what's inside?
I made the original Basil's Adventure in 2016 as a Christmas present for my wife. I had just found out about Pico-8, and I thought it'd be fun to make a simple exploration platformer. She loved it.
Since then I've done a bunch more Pico-8 projects, including two more wintry games intended as greeting cards for my friends. They've all been weird little design experiments, like, Gordy and the Monster Moon is an attempt to do a game that feels like Zelda with none of the usual Zelda interactions (no sword, no bow and arrow, no hookshot, no boomerang, no bombs, etc.), Maximum Overdrive 2 is a non-combat stealth roguelike, Look Who's the Shining Two! is a mashup of Zelda and Sokoban, &c.
My game designer friends eat this stuff up -- of course they love the weird game design experiments. And I'm proud of all these projects. But, for example, my wife just can't bring herself to care about any of them. They're too hard and too weird. This year, I decided to go back to basics, make a game that was just simple casual fun, based on a time-tested mechanic.
Basil Returns is basically just Basil's Adventure again with a bigger map and better art. My pixel art has leveled up a lot since 2016 -- though I've never made a game with this much art in it, and it was exhausting. I hope I can go back to making ugly games after this!
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