Byte Sabor is a top down arcade game developed as my second project in Pico 8. Little was initially known about what kind of game it would become, other than that it was going to have “as many over the top effects as possible”.

The sole mechanic of the game – using a super powerful teleport through enemies – developed based on an original “dash” effect I came up with (the lines visible in the above gif), with the enemy types developing based off that idea. Most of the work in the game went into the dynamic bosses, which have procedural bullet patterns, and were originally going to have procedural sprites before I ran out of space.

Eventually the game developed into a sort of roguelite, with stat-based item pickups that can either improve or worsen the player’s stats. Unlike Trihard, this game only has one gamemode.