The Idea

It was 5/30/2021. A Friday. 1:03pm. I remember lounging with my wife. Jaeden was scrolling through reels on Instagram or TikTok (or TikToks that made their way to Instagram), and I pulled up the notes app on the iPad and started sketching. This was it. THE IDEA!

It’d be two samurai in an arena. The crowd would be hanging with bated breath…

The sketch was awful, but I had to get it down!

There’d be a giant timer ticking down to zero—then they strike! It would be simple, like Pokemon type differences or elemental damage in a Final Fantasy. It would be even simpler than that. High beats Low. Low beats Mid. And Mid beats High. It was rock/paper/scissors. It was small in scope. Something I could accomplish. Obtainable.

But it was also more than that. It struck a note from my childhood. I was a martial artist growing up. From Jeet Kun Do to Jujitsu to Boxing and Kickboxing. I ate it up. My friends and I would meet on the regular to spar using different styles. In sixth grade, we were boxing in the front yard of whichever parent could stand it that day. As a teenager, we all took to the growing sport of Mixed Martial Arts. We found local gyms and learned everything we could. Just after my 21st birthday, I had my first (and only) professional MMA fight.

0-1 professional record, bay-bee.

The game of fighting is what drew me in so hard. Read the opponent and exploit the opening. And at its essence, this game would be just that.

I got to work. From my new obsession with game development, I’d come across a lot of mock ups (concept screen-shots or system demos). They weren’t games, but just a what-if. What if this were a game? I thought that was a good place to start. I worked with Pixaki, an iPad pixel art app. It had a lot of features I liked: it was built for pixel art, could animate frame by frame, worked wonders with the Apple Pencil, and—best of all—it was on the iPad. I could work while being near my family, not locked away in an office, but in the living room, at the kitchen counter, wherever. Even just ten minutes here or there and I could get something done.

And three months later, it was done.

It was a constant struggle to keep the scope down. Limited resolution. Limited color palette. Limited frames per animation. I had one mantra: keep it obtainable. The result was 285 frames of animation. I would just watch it over and over again. There it was. The idea. Come to life.

The last frames were a title card. My introduction to game development.

“A mock up by Andrew Ray Wiggins.”

So pretentious.

But why pixel art? And why the Game Boy palette? They are simple, obtainable, styles—yes. But maybe they could be more than that. Or, at the least, both pragmatic and meaningful.

Next time, Devlog 02: Pixels and Palettes.