pastagraph

Submission to Falling Block Jam 2026.

Controls: arrow keys, z and x to play. Enter for menu.

Art by Audrey Lee.

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The idea for this game first came from stumbling across Last Word, a small word-matching game by Bennett Foddy. I thought of a block-clearing game with a similar mechanic, where blocks come from all 4 directions and you control a square player piece that collects and combos blocks from all sides while trying to avoid growing too big/unwieldy. I thought it would be cool to add this bit of an "avoider" game flavor to the genre, but very quickly it became clear that the prototype was a complicated, un-fun mess. After much design flailing I realized the blocks resembled pixel art and decided to hard pivot into a picture-making puzzle game (similar to nonograms) while keeping the combo-on-color mechanic. Tried a lot of different piece shapes and grid dimensions before settling on only 2-block pieces aka dominos and an 8x8 grid with 2 "gutter" lanes to give breathing room. Inadvertently, the core gameplay simplified/clarified into something that I'm pretty sure (but not certain bc I've not played it myself) closely resembles Puyo Puyo, which is validating.

Overall I'm happy with how this turned out! Actually finishing a game always feels rewarding. The game jam process was relatively stress-free, and I appreciate having 10 whole days to let ideas sit in my mind and naturally unfold. There were a couple design "aha!" moments I'm proud of, like using a bag-randomizer to decide domino colors which instantly improved the game feel by eliminating long runs of useless pieces. I intentionally wanted the gameplay to err on the easy side (e.g. drop rate doesn't ever accelerate) to fit the cozy aesthetic, but designing difficulty is definitely something I struggle with. Designing how hard a game is, it turns out, is itself very hard ha.

This was my first Pico-8 game, and the tool has been an absolute blast to use. I'm learning so much from both its design and reading other people's carts. Perhaps the most fun I had this project was making the SFX and music. It was seamless to tweak things in the builtin tracker and test in-game! I'm pleasantly surprised with how the music turned out; it's a last-minute arrangement of the Chinese folk song "Jasmine Flower" from Puccini's Turandot.

And of course biggest thanks to Audrey for breathing life into the game with her awesome pixel art. Working together on Pastagraph was a treat, as always.

Now, onto the next one!