Bitsy is the small video game engine with a big community

In the video game Under A Star Called Sun, players wake up on a spaceship. There are only a few things to do, and they include making coffee, water the plants, and gaze out upon the universe. There is a room on the ship with a machine that allows you to re-create memories. Suddenly, you are transported to a sidewalk, then to a park, and then to a restaurant. It is a snapshot of two friends hanging out together on an ordinary August day, but one that is likely to fade, to corrupt, as the main character says.

Under A Star Called Sun was made by Cecile Richard. Richard says that it's a response to grief. Richard made a game set on a spaceship after his friend died. One of the easiest ways to start making video games is with a piece of free open-source software called Bitsy. The tool strips narrative game-making down to its basics; a room, an avatar, dialogue, all rendered in 8-bit pixel art. A narrative begins to emerge when you string a series of rooms together. Some people use Bitsy to tell jokes. Under A Star Called Sun is a five-minute meditation on loss that has an emotional heft.

Richard has made a number of games that were sweet and filled with sadness. Staying up late on the internet and chatting with friends over instant messaging is what Endless Scroll shimmers with. I Am Still Here bottles the weird quiet of the Pandemic, imagining that we are all ghosts and unable to leave the places we call home. Richard's writing is beautiful and her visuals convey a sense of place. The elements gesture to worlds larger than the ones Bitsy can render.

The software is described as a little editor for little games and is a departure from mainstream titles that focus on graphics, open worlds and complex game mechanics. You can't create any of that in the most popular engines. If you load the Bitsy editor in your browser, you will see five simple windows, but only three of which are used to make a game. The first shows the room you are working on, the second shows items and tiles, and the third lets you choose colors. Richard feels liberated by the tool because of the limitations.

Image: Cecile Richard

In the summer of 2016 Bitsy was born on a shuttle bus from Seattle to Microsoft's Redmond campus, an hour-long journey above the waters of Lake Washington. Adam Le Doux, the creator of the game-making software, was working as a programmer at Microsoft while also working on creative projects in his spare time. He hit a brick wall. He decided to make games on his phone in an attempt to break the monotony. The problem was that no such software existed, so the programmer wrote his own over the weekend.

Le Doux was released to the public, but the first version of Bitsy was more lo-fi. Le Doux wanted to make a game on his commute without getting his laptop out. He would type the game data into the notes app on his phone while sitting on the bus. There was a makeshift version of Bitsy that read the text files from the dropbox account. While Le Doux was writing the text file on his phone, he could playtest the game on his personal website. He says that the impact was immediate.

When I get home was Le Doux's first project, an homage to his home life. He and Mary Margaret are asleep on the couch, and their cat is hungry. Le Doux's second game, September is halfway over, was a nostalgic paean to fall, and his third, In the middle of the night, details the moment you wake up on a camping trip and need to pee. They are all autobiographical, each scene filled with objects which prompt bite-sized poetic ruminations. Le Doux uploaded the tool to the internet after he made these, and then, following a few retweets from friends in the Seattle game development scene, other Bitsy games started to roll in.

When Le Doux uploaded the tool to the digital marketplace itch.io, the community grew even more. Monthly game jams were centered around a different theme. One of these included a deep dive into the moss by Pol Clarissou, a designer and artist. Writer and curator Emilie Reed hosted their own jams. Ian Martin's interactive essay on Clint was included in her Bitsy essay jam. Martin made the case that Clint wasn't an incel but simply misunderstood, highlighting the fatphobia that exists around much of the online discourse about him.

As more people got involved, some first-time game makers, others more experienced, Bitsy started to get hacked by the community. The open-sourced Bitsy engine was made available to the public after Le Doux realized that people wanted to add their own spin to the engine. Ensuring that the entire process of keeping the software up to date is as transparent as possible feeds into Le Doux's commitment to art preservation. The community can pick up where he left off if he ever takes a step back.

Image: Cecile Richard

Reed describes Bitsy as a mass art tool, not in the sense that mass art is produced using the software. Reed refers to art critic Susan Sontag's writings on photography and the way that practice became a mass art form in the 1970s, just like sex and dancing.

The democratization of game-making over the past 10 years has seen the practice expand beyond major video game companies, and Unity is often held up as the game engine that spearheaded this change. Reed says that tools such as Twine and Bitsy have been just as influential. She emphasizes how easy the tool is and how knowledge and techniques are pooled by users on the Bitsy Discord server. Bitsy is a piece of software that is modifiable. Reed points out that Bitsy games can be self-published to a web page, similar to the way Philomela games can be self-published.

The baggage associated with game-making has been shed by each of these aspects. You don't need any formal training to use it, games don't take months to complete, and there's no.exe file to open at the end of a project. It is unsurprising that Bitsy has been used in educational contexts. The engine has been featured at small-town libraries and coding events, as well as workshops at the UK's National Videogame Museum. The National Videogame Museum's learning officer says that Bitsy allows children and young people to make fully formed digital games really easily. It's easy to get to grips with, and we found it popular with people.

The first taste of game-making software for a number of game makers was Bitsy, and now they are employed as game designers. The studio behind the upcoming slice-of-life Dordogne adventure is Un Je Ne Sais Quoi, which they work for.

Bitsy is not just a stepping stone, it is also a risk of legitimizing professional work over that made using the editor. The beauty of Bitsy is that it allows people to make art on their own terms, from Taipei Metro Quest, a richly textured reflection on returning home, to There Aren't Really Words, a devastating vignette about receiving the worst possible news while washing. The lived experiences that inform these games ring true, just like Under A Star Called Sun. It is not clear how Bitsy will influence games in the future; perhaps we will see a lot of autobiographical works.

It doesn't really matter. The legacy of Bitsy is already a gift.