How to Make Your First Narrative Video Game with Bitsy

For those restless souls — like me — who want to try their hand at creating video game-like experiences, there are simple tools and platforms to take that first step. Later, as we want more complex projects, other possibilities will open up, but for now we can start with a very, very simple one that not only lets us understand something about sequences and narrative but is also easy to use and easy to share.

Bitsy is a tool for creating narrative games in 1 bit created by Adam Le Doux. It runs entirely on Itch.io and lets us download our projects as HTML or executables. The beauty here is the limitation: we have 8x8 grids, few colors, and a handful of variables. Yet with so little you can do a lot, which is why Bitsy is widely used in video game jams and has a community that loves the tool's minimalist approach. People who, through mods or sheer creativity, make beautiful things.

How to get started with Bitsy

First, go to https://ledoux.itch.io/bitsy. There you'll find tutorials and community forums with tons of examples for making things. Then you can watch this tutorial playlist on YouTube, which in 30 minutes explains absolutely everything you need to know to create your first project.

For example, mine, which I called La Torre del Mago (The Wizard's Tower), I made it just with those videos and was able to upload it to my Itch.io profile in HTML format, to be played online.

Just as I made that mini project, with just that info you can make yours too. My recommendation is to first get hands-on with Bitsy to familiarize yourself with the options it offers, and then think of a short narrative sequence where you use everything the tool has to offer. And that's it! You can make your first game, upload it to your Itch.io profile, and start sharing it.

And if you want to take it further and become a Bitsy pro, I recommend checking out the community's games, which will blow your mind.

And if this article managed to inspire you to make a little video game project, send it to hola421bn@gmail.com and we'll try it out. Or share it on our social media