You've played Super Mario, right? And at least a half dozen other classic side-scrollers, and maybe a few more recent ones? I mean, if you play video games at all, you've probably played a side-scroller. It's a tried and true format. In fact, it's one of my favorite genres, and I'm very happy that there continue to be game developers who use the format. The one that reignited my enthusiasm for the genre years ago was LIMBO. It seemed to open up some possibilities for the genre (especially in terms of tone and aesthetic), and I think it ignited other developers interests, as well. There were a bunch of knockoffs soon after it came out.

Before you click on the image to experience this thing, a couple notes:

• Move backwards and forwards with the < and > arrow keys
• Jump & fly with the ^ arrow key
• SHIFT to peck
• Pretty sure there's some other key that triggers a caw sound effect

Janky, I know. I never got anywhere near a refinement stage; everything is a mess. It was very satisfying to get even this much made, though. I was able to make it with the free version of Construct 2, which promises that you can make games without having to go through the pesky step of coding them yourself. Turns out, there's still a lot you need to wrap your head around, and nothing was quite so straightforward as you would hope. Maybe they've improved in subsequent versions of the program.

The idea was to play as this crow, animated via rotoscope from various corvid videos I found, and to be able to make it do a few things, have some vague interaction with the environment. You'll see I've added a portion of Poe's poem The Raven in there, with some idea that maybe it could be worked into the gameplay. With the hills and landscape elements I just wanted to know how they would look in with that painterly technique. And I'm strangely fascinated by parallax, and how deep one could make a two-dimensional space to be. I think there was a strict limit of parallax levels with the free version of Construct 2.

Someday maybe I'll have the time/space/energy to figure out how to make a proper little side-scroller. Probably it would be with pixel art, rather than this more artsy/painterly approach above. I would be content with the barest of bones, too, as long as it all worked and was aesthetically cohesive. I'm sure there are plenty of game developers who whip up something like that on a lunch break.

It just sounds so dang fun to create your own tiny little world. The littler the better, is what I would want to make; none of this massive open world, online multiplayer BS. Keep it simple, Simon says.