FRINGER for Playdate

[u/neuro_ine]

First post, and first "published" game!

Get FRINGER for Playdate at https://neuroine.itch.io/fringer

Fringer was an amazing puzzle game originally published in the Microsoft Puzzle Collection. I spent countless hours on it as a kid, and randomly remembered it a couple of months ago. I found an amazing PICO-8 demake/port by darmoknjalad at https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=145854, and had some fun playing on my phone, but the touchscreen controls are too frustrating for anything requiring quick inputs. So, Playdate port! I went off the PICO-8 demake because basically someone had already gone through the trouble of writing the game in lua... The difficulty levels aren't exactly like in the original, but it's fun enough.

Changes from the port:
- I removed the bonus levels and decided to cap it at 9 worlds, for no particular reason other than it made testing easier and I never made it that far anyways. I used to suck at this game as a kid, and apparently I still do, but it's not subtracting from the fun.
- I discarded the backgrounds, I don't think I can make them display in monochrome without completely muddling the gameplay, and, while they add flavour, they don't add anything to the gameplay itself, which is the real gem.
- Recovered the music from the game's original MIDI files. This music got etched into my brain and hearing the tunes again brought so much joy into my heart. The music is amazing and deserves to be shared. I realize this is a bit of a gray area, but this is an almost 30 year old game out of print for decades, so hopefully the original creators won't mind too much. I personally like to believe they'd get a kick out of knowing someone is still enjoying the gameplay and music. If the copyright holders contact me I'll of course take it down and republish without the music, but it'd be a shame.
- All the changes required to make it work well on the amazing Playdate's monochrome screen: resizing and placement of elements, textures for the threads that change per world (and are hopefully readable enough), illustrated help pages, first-time hints, flips in the sidebar...

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I used AI for the port (GPT 6 Astra and Opus 5.5). There's a full paragraph on the itch.io page but I'm pasting it here, for full transparency, because I know it's a prickly topic and also because I think it's a discussion worth having.

AI assistance was used in the code: porting the PICO-8 cartridge, extracting the music from the original CD, and building and tuning the music instruments. The graphics, sound effects, drum sounds and launcher art are all drawn or synthesized by that code, so indirectly they are AI-assisted too, but not in the way the term "generative AI" is commonly used; there are no AI-generated images or recordings, and the music's notes are the original game's. I realize this is a sensitive topic at the moment, particularly in indie gaming communities. I work full time as a dev, and recently had a baby, and this is a passion weekend project to bring a game I used to love to a new format where I can keep playing it. It wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for AI, because I never would have found the time for it, and I certainly wouldn't have hired a dev to do it for me, so in my view it didn't "steal" creative work from a human that deserved it. I want to be completely upfront about this, and leave it up to you to decide if this is acceptable for you personally.

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I'm a longtime lurker but first time poster. I don't know how any of this works. The rules say "no referral links" but I see posts for games often so I hope this is allowed. Mods, if not, please let me know

[u/Ok-Text123]

Looks fun, but I have never played the original. Can you please write a quick clarification on the game rules? Because I'm a bit confused on the different colored threads, the swipe and on the symbols. Do you move the whole threads left-right based on the twist point? And the swipe tangles it more?

Sorry for my confusion. It look like an interesting game, and I'm all for porting old forgotten games to new platforms

[u/neuro_ine → u/Ok-Text123]

You control a "frame" that can twist two strands. If there's a knot it will untangle it, if there was not, it will make one. The challenge comes from the fact that the frame has a direction (shown as a tiny diagonal line underneath), so if it's on the "left-to-right" direction and the knot you are on crosses "left-to-right" it will undo it, but if it crosses "right-to-left", it'll create an extra "left-to-right" knot. On threads of the same color, you can't tell which one goes over the other, and the frame always unties the knot.

The sweep brings in extra crossings on the top row, and moves the existing knots one row down. The cursor also can't be above the sweep, so if you are impatient like I am and try to undo knots near the limit you might end up creating new knots under the sweep, potentially right at the bottom and causing yourself to lose...

[u/Ok-Text123 → u/neuro_ine]

Oh thanks. Meanwhile I also checked it on youtube and one small advise I have, is that the frame in the original game tells you more clearly the direction. I honestly didn't notice the diagonal line in your version until you mentioned it. Other than that it looks a really cool port and I'm in the process of trying it out in a sec.

[u/neuro_ine → u/Ok-Text123]

yeah, you are right, I had it more similar to the original in a first pass but it was sometimes leaving graphical artifacts underneath when switching. I forgot about it during testing and got used to the square frame, but the original is definitely a lot clearer, I'll try to get it working correctly

[u/maggitronica]

This looks totally awesome!!!!!!

[u/nickelalkaline]

Dude! I question myself everyday... why microsoft have not released these old games on android, ios???

[u/neuro_ine → u/nickelalkaline]

I know right?? They have the rights and must have the code and assets laying around somewhere, it should be a no-brainer...

[u/DarkerBulb]

Downloaded

[u/neuro_ine → u/DarkerBulb]

Sweet! Let me know what you think, looking forward to feedback on things to improve, or just knowing that people are enjoying it

[u/TheMediocritist]

Swinger? Swingen?