Made in collaboration with k0cc4 for Mini Jam 46: Justice.
The Limitation for this Mini jam was 5 colors: Only 5 distinct colors may be used throughout the game.
Our game won the prize as the game with the best art out of the 46 submissions. But his was also the only strong thing about the game, as the gameplay is basically non-existent.
About the development
What was special about this game was the work we put into the shader’s. As we were only allowed to show up to five distinct colors throughout the game, we decided to dither it up.
So we wrote our own shaders, one for making distinct edges and one for transforming the colors on screen into the five colors we chose.
The five color post processing shader is a variant on Bayer dithering, as seen in Return to the Obra Dinn. But instead of just dithering between light and dark we swapped it a bit around, instead using four of the five colors to indicate color and the last one to indicate darkness, then we just had to figure out for each pixel which two colors we had to dither between.
We improved upon the algorithm for the next project (Behind the door), to enable the algorithm to actually represent all colors, still only using 5. But we didn’t end up using it there. If I find the time I’ll add more info about that on this post.