Overview
Maybe the conversations we had are the tangents we started along the way.
'Tangent Book Club' is a short, narrative-driven game created in Bitsy about conversation, memory, and the delightful chaos of digression. Set within the cosy confines of a house, players move between rooms to meet with members of a book club that never quite manages to stay on topic. Instead of finishing their chosen book, the group drifts into anecdotes, side stories, and shared reflections.
Structured as an interactive dialogue, 'Tangent Book Club' highlights how the warmth of conversation often lies not in conclusions but in the tangents themselves, echoing the way our memories preserve fragments and impressions of time spent together.
'Tangent Book Club' is a short-form game, lasting around 5 minutes. It can also be defined as a game poem, a term created by Jordan Magnuson.
Design
'Tangent Book Club' embraces Bitsy's signature pixel art style with a soft, monochrome purple palette that creates a retro and dreamlike, reflective atmosphere. Each room of the house is sparsely but thoughtfully decorated, evoking a sense of intimacy while leaving space for the dialogue to take centre stage.
The soundscape is equally pared back: all audio was created within Bitsy itself, producing a simple and retro, but atmospheric musical layer that frames the dialogue without overwhelming it. The result is a quiet, memory-like vignette, where visuals and audio combine to support the game's focus on storytelling and conversation as a shared, lived experience.
Roles
'Tangent Book Club' was created as a solo project, with all development roles handled by me:
- Game Creator & Designer: Designed the concept, mechanics, and narrative flow. The game was inspired by Ignacio Puccini's Cuando se fue la luz.
- Art Director & Illustrator: Illustrated all in-game assets in Bitsy. The tileset was based on Anna Anthropy's Safe as Houses tileset.
- Programmer: The game's short, simple code was created in Bitsy. It features a simple 'if-else' structure and handles a small number of variables to trigger the appropriate dialogue.
- Writer: Wrote the entire dialogue.
- Sound Designer & Composer: Created a simple, 8-bit style song within Bitsy. You can check out the theme on my music page.
- Game Tester: Personally tested the game to ensure clarity, emotional pacing, and consistency in tone.