A tiny scenic story made over a couple of days in January 2018, using bitsy.

Controls: Arrow keys to move or advance text.

The location is loosely based on Carlingill in the Howgill Fells in Cumbria, UK. The name "Silverybield" comes from the (unrelated) location in this news story, which I felt was too nice a word not to use. Bield is an old dialect word for shelter.

Foss is the Old Norse word for waterfall, usually found as "force" in place names. You can read more about Cumbrian toponyms here, even though it has nothing much to do with this game :)

-Ed

More information

Status	Released
Platforms	HTML5
Rating	Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars (43 total ratings)
Author	Twisted Tree
Made with	bitsy
Tags	1-bit, 2D, Bitsy, Walking simulator

Comments

Dan Lowe90 days ago (1 edit)

A lot of people have played EarthBound for SNES at this point but the first time I played the game was on a used cartridge some friend at school got at a pawn shop, which I managed to trade for before he could delete the save files on it.

The first time I played EarthBound was trapped in an area you can only access at the end of the game, likely using items and strategies that the enemies in the area would require. There were no NPCs, no shops and as I recall only a few items to find, but the save file came well equipped and the characters were all at their max level.

After a bit of a riddle in the final boss fight you are warped back to the main map of the game and given the opportunity to walk some of your companions back to where you found them. You can visit most if not all of the game that was available before you fought the final boss, and you have some access to your inventory as it was available in the normal game, but you can't fight in battles without resorting to game genie type exploiting of the game's functionality which I obviously didn't know at the time. And you don't really need your items, they just help with fast travel. But there's a bike you haven't been able to use since you met your first companion...

So for me my first experience of EarthBound was a game where you fought a few endgame creatures in a bleak, foreign landscape, played the boss fight as one does, then got released into an open world with no constraints and no need to solve puzzles or defeat enemies. In 199X on a Super Nintendo. The villains were already reformed or licked. The bystander NPCs were right where you last left them. You could just take a walk home, which I did. Many times.

(Really liked Proteus, Ed. Got the boxed set. Only found this little game all these years later. Watch your step out there.)