The initial inspiration for this game came from Super 48k Bro which simulates very fast horizontal scrolling on the ZX Spectrum by using pipes. That is, filling the screen with 8x8 character cells that are filled on one side so that INK and PAPER give you tall pixels that are very fast to manipulate. It gave me the idea of also using bars for a top-down view of a “dungeon” giving 4-way smooth scrolling using the same technique.
I used z88dk for this and iterated on the engine, and evolved a game out of that. A bit like how evolution seems to converge into crabs, this ended up becoming a Sokoban variant. I created my own Z80 graphics routines, and my own AY tracker, and transcribed Clotho using Sonic Pi for the music, which I thought fit the strange ambience.
Download .tap file
Play it now
A few notes on what I did
Talk is cheap, show me the code.