Winging It is a Game Boy Color game about being a bird momma. It was produced by myself and five other DePaul students in 72 hours for the 2020 Wholesome Games Jam, and was featured at IndieCade Horizons 2021.
As the only team member with previous experience in GB Studio, I scripted all the gameplay and interactions: cutscenes, object behavior, and level layouts. While this was technically programming work, the visual interface of GB Studio makes it feel more like a design problem. Scenes are stitched together with dotted lines similar to interactive prototypes in Figma.
Working in GB Studio was a great choice for the jam, because it gave us very strict limits on colors, text length, controls, and sprites on-screen at once. Adhering to the actual hardware limitations of the Game Boy Color helped keep the scope of the project small and gave it a distinct style. It also gave us the ability to produce a playable physical copy of the game, which is a rare treat as indie video game developers.
A small moment in the game that I’m particularly proud of is the cutscene where the bird builds her nest. Scripting out the movements was time consuming, and I had to account for three possible nest materials the player could have. After brute-forcing my way through coding the three variants during the jam, I implemented a more elegant solution for a later patch.
