CAMEL RACE

In 2020, my eldest son began learning Scratch and dabbling with Python. That year he was 8 years old, and I was 44. To teach him how to make video games the "traditional" way, from pixel art to music and coding, I looked for a closed programming environment similar to what I knew from my childhood with 8-it computers and ended up with Pico-8.

35 years after making my first game for the ZX Spectrum, I wanted to make an updated version with him, taking advantage that he was the same age as I was when I created it. For this, I added basic gameplay to Camels 2020, based on classic dance games, where you press the correct key as it appears on the screen.

You can play from the browser using the cursor keys and the Z and X keys. Within the game, the button corresponding to the Z key is represented by a circle, and the X by a cross. It is very important to associate "circle" with "Z key" if you play from a browser.

https://github.com/Ganso/camellos-2020

COMPAS RACER

After this first trial, my son and I decided to make another game, "Compas Racer." Since he wanted the characters to be his favorite YouTubers, and I didn't know them, he did the pixel art for all the main sprites, and I just polished and shaded them. The music was also created by me, based on equally quirky covers previously made by those YouTubers.

We also made the mechanics a bit more complex for this game by adding a bonus point when you get 10 correct clicks in a row and a pirate flag that works in reverse.

https://github.com/Ganso/compasracer