Shaki Shaki Island is a wonderful Sport Boy-style journey the place you should use your inventive expertise to redraw sprites to progress.
Created as a part of the Sport Off 2024 sport jam, Shaki Shaki Island is a deceptively good ‘sketch-em up’ that actually pushes expectations via its dual-interfaces. On this sport, you’ll journey to a distant island geared up with solely a drawing pencil and pocket book. From then on, you’ll discover the island, speaking to the inhabitants and trying to gather secrets and techniques. Nonetheless, most of your interactions shall be accomplished via doodling belongings you see round you on the planet.
Doodling, on this case, means selecting considered one of three colors in your pencil and filling out blocks on a handy-dandy, stuck-to-the-bottom-of-your-screen eight-by-eight notepad. If these shapes occur to match choose issues on the planet then one thing will occur. No matter what that really is, it’s actually, actually satisfying once you handle to transform the ‘world’ occasion onto the palette, even when it does take a bit little bit of getting used to.
The principle cause that it’d take a bit little bit of getting used to is as a result of it’s not made abundantly clear that the colors aren’t vital to the drawing, and since the sprites on the planet are usually not 8×8, as a substitute being (presumably) 16×16. As soon as it’s clicked although — and that can have nearly definitely occurred by the point you’ve sketched the primary couple of flowers — it feels actually, actually satisfying and, critically, cool. It’s extremely simple to lose your self in Shaki Shaki Island‘s whimsy.
At current there’s no definitive finish. Nonetheless, with 22 issues to sketch there’s greater than sufficient there to lose your self for some time. That mentioned, the developer has mentioned that they’re planning on including extra content material, together with an ending, to it in time.
Shaki Shaki Island is playable now (without spending a dime) on itch.io.