Keep Kiwi Happy

Properties

• date:: 2025-07-08
• time_spent:: did not record
• format:: Pico-8 game
• url:: KiwiJoy - Work in progress
• theme:: Make Life Magical, Not Just Practical

Project details

What did you ship?

Part of the 30 Ships, 30 Days challenge

KiwiJoy is a micro-game about seeking happiness, even if the boost you get wears off over time.

🌱 Question / Spark

What was I curious about?

I wanted to know if I could actually ship a game. I've tried to make games before, but they've always been too large in scope.

🧠 Hypothesis / Hunch

What did I think I knew or want to share?

The ideas that sparked this concept were Baseline happiness and Hedonic adaptation. Humans return to a set point of happiness, despite changes in circumstances after a given point.

✨ How This Relates to the Theme

Explicitly link this artifact to your theme. Even a sentence is magic.

Knowing that happiness is fleeting and also that it persists at a certain level is kinda freeing. You don't need to chase happiness if you know that you'll return to a baseline of joy and contentment. In fact, chasing it is kind of futile. No matter how high you take yourself, you will come back down. 🎈

There are probably other books or studies out there about raising your baseline happiness... That would be interesting. Because if you had a very low baseline of happiness, then that doesn't bode well for your overall life satisfaction!

(In the game, Kiwi has a very low baseline of happiness. Poor bird.)

🔍 Data / Life Experience

Lived moment, convo, story, quote, etc.

I first encountered these ideas in @Gilbert2006StumblingHappiness* (which honestly I should re-read because it's been at least 15 years since I read it...)

// The nice thing about having a bookworm as a dad is that you can borrow all his books. In my younger years, my dad read a lot of Tom Clancy, but he also had A LOT of non-fiction. Tom Clancy isn't for me, but I love non-fiction!!!! If ONLY I took notes and knew about zettelkasten and PKM back then...
// I also read a LOT of Newsweek and TIME magazine. No, I wasn't popular. Why do you ask? 🤣

🧰 Scope Notes

In Scope:

• Sprites: Kiwi the player, Star sprite (good), Angry face sprite (bad)
• Random stars and angry faces falling down the screen
• Basic map
• Basic decay mechanic for happiness
• High score functionality
• Basic collision
• Kiwi stays on the screen (lol)
• Game over screen
• Left and Right controls
• Kiwi has basic animations for moving left and right!!!!!

Out of Scope (long list encouraged!):

• sound effects
• music
• Kiwi speeds up and down
• more sprites to represent good and bad events
• more complex art
• special mode if happiness >= 11
• Increase or decrease Kiwi's baseline happiness
• 'Too much of a good thing' - e.g. phone sprite initially gives big boost but if you get too many in a span of time, it reduces your happiness heavily (as doomscrolling does!)
• Parallax background effect or moving background
• Moving foreground lol
• Mood-based background color changes (low joy = dull palette, high joy = sparkle)
• A rest mechanic — standing still slowly raises happiness (behavioral activation/grounding) -- vs right now moving and resting does the happiness decay
• In-game text-based event triggers (e.g. "Kiwi remembers a warm hug" = burst of joy)
• Happiness bar that changes sprite pose or expression
• Player-named Kiwi (little textbox intro)
• Pause/Reset menu (for future polish pass)

🪞 Reflection

🗂️ Project Modularity

What did I re-use from other projects? Link to them (the more you reuse the better! Think like a programmer)

I don't think I managed to reuse anything from an existing project, which is a shame. Hopefully for the next ones...

🧠→✨ Synthesis / Lesson

What did I learn during the shipment?

I was starting to feel really bad while working on this game. I started thinking I had wasted the day! I wanted to give up, and I felt like it wasn't going anywhere. I had to really think about what the simplest version of this game could be and then just ship THAT. When I hit export after I finished the game, I felt so excited. Like, yay. I did that.

Also, lol. It was interesting vibe coding? I did some of the game logic, but I admit I asked ChatGPT for help with the more complicated stuff like collision and decay.

🧭 STOP • START • KEEP

• ✖️ Stop:
  • Trying to remember what I did the day before and work on my project template during the project hahahaha
  • Writing code inside Pico-8 (do it on Pycharm or SOMETHING ELSE)
• 🔁 Start:
  • Recording out of scope ideas in the project note. I think it would be fun if I come back to this project and added to it. Then I could add notes to the Scope info around what was later added (maybe I cross it off the out of scope list and then add a new section to this note)
• ✅ Keep:
  • Doing this project 🥹💖

🧠 Zettels or Tracts Spawned?

Any permanent notes, insights, or essays created?

(1B2A) Copy Gamers to Reach Flow State - I previously wrote this, and I think it applies here in a way. Games have the ability to induce flow state because of the parameters and constraints in which they operate; it's something I try and think about when designing systems in my life-- and I could do a better job around thinking about those parameters and constraints in game programming.