cosmetic update — january 2024

Hello!

Here’s a little update as an approximate 3-year anniversary of TOPOGRAPHY being released.

I’ve been meaning to do this for literal years: I finally changed the text colour on the light green background to be navy, which should vastly improve contrast and make it a lot easier to read now. I don’t know why I overcomplicated the solution in my head when it would have taken me just 5 minutes to do…

I’ve also added a little orange-red accent colour for certain sprites which kinda add to the general vibes and hopefully also help with navigation for bits that may be a bit confusing or hard to notice (the read-more ‘link’ on tumblr being the main example). The way you advance text in this is extremely simple which I guess makes those moments where you can actually move the cursor around kind of disorienting in comparison.

While this update doesn’t fundamentally change the fabric of the game and I’m happy with its new look, I’m still leaving the original version here as a downloadable file in case people really like the older version for whatever reason.

I recently revisited this game when I was a guest at the ACMI Women and Non-binary Games Club and I was weirdly surprised with how much I still really like the writing and rhythm in it. It’s my last ‘proper’ Bitsy game (excluding i am still here which is made in the slightly different Bitsy 3D) and that feels pretty special too. There’s something about the more bitter vibe in this that I think is an interesting precursor to the stuff I’ve been making with DOMINO CLUB since.

It’s also a game about a pretty wildly specific personal period of my life and my lifelong rejection of nostalgia, so I’m glad that it resonates with people in equally strange and specific ways.

Maybe one day I’ll revisit making games in Bitsy… who knows?

–Cecile