Interview: Hodling Out for a Hero
By John and Hero of Bitcoin
John:
Thank you for taking the time to have an interview with Stackchain magazine; tell me a little about your Bitcoin journey and what led you to create Hero of Bitcoin?
Hero:
Well I first got into bitcoin mid 2017; as most people do I delved into other coins too. After a few years I had a realisation that it was Bitcoin only and started to think how I could contribute to the community. I love pixel art so I decided to make my own. I thought pixel art is the perfect medium for the digital revolution. I wanted to bring back that feeling of nostagia to Bitcoin. At first I used to charge people in sats to make their display pictures for twitter. I made some art that was shared and used by big names such as Samson Mow, and Michael Saylor. From there I decided that pixel art would translate well into game making. Being a gamer myself I grew up with a Gameboy and I’ve always wanted to make a game. There is a lot of different software that makes it much easier to make a game than it used to. So first of all, I was just planning to make a very short art piece for the Gameboy, but it quickly turned into a full game.
Hero:
The game itself is inspired by a few games that I love, such as Super Mario, Zelda 2 and Secret of Mana.
John:
If entered up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and Start at the hero of bitcoin main screen, would anything happen?
Hero:
No haha.
John:
Tell me a bit about designing everything for the game – I’m assuming you had to do quite a bit more than designing sprites.
Hero:
Yeah, designing the game was very time consuming; it took me over 2 years to make. I had to obviously write all the dialogue of the main story then all the dialogue that the NPCs would say when you talk to them. The Gameboy has limited ram and processing power so everything needs to be designed in tiles which are reused to save space. There are many limitations to how many unique tiles you have as well as how many actors and the amount of scripting used. The programs I used were GB Studio, Tiled and Pyxel. There was quite a lot of debugging that I had to do, and I also had to make sure it worked on all the consoles that can run it, and there’s quite a lot – The OG Gameboy, GB Pocket, GB Colour, GB Advance, GB SP and then there’s the SNES and Gameboy can also play with an attachment.
John:
What was the process like when choosing to make an adventure game for the Gameboy? Was that always the desired genre and platform or could there have been a SNES bitcoin tactical RPG?
Hero:
I wanted to keep it simple and as a first game I wanted something that is familiar in style to games they played as a kid. Everyone loves Mario, so I made the mechanics quite similar. I was originally testing a top down game similar to Zelda for the Gameboy, but decided to make the platformer first as I thought it would be less time consuming. The Zelda-like game will be used for version 2 which I’m now currently working on. I never considered creating for consoles – I’m just not skilled enough and there aren’t any easily accessible tools like there are for the Gameboy. One day I would love to make a game for the SNES but without a big team it’s probably never going to happen.
John:
What did you do for the music/soundtrack?
Hero:
I tried making the music myself, but it didn’t sound very good! So with the sats I got from GeyserFund I hired someone who goes by Mr. V to make the music for me. He unfortunately wouldn’t take bitcoin though, even with the offer of doubling costs, so I had to pay him in fiat. The music turned out great though – I was very happy with it. There are about 20 tracks.
John:
Any there any cheat codes in the game or Easter eggs?
Hero:
There is something small, but I don’t want to spoil it yet sorry 🙂
John:
The POW to make a game by yourself is insane; in total how many hours would you estimate you put into it and what would you say is the play time?
Hero:
Probably took over 1000 hours to make; I’m definitely not even making close to minimum wage for the amount of time haha. Can only do this because I was enjoying making it. Play time is pretty short if you don’t die, probably about an hour, but for many people it’s probably going to be a few hours due to having to retry from the start when you die.
John:
Considering I’ve seen a speedrun of Super Mario Bros. in under 5 minutes, I’m sure there’s plenty of playtime. I know you have been showing off the sequel to Hero of Bitcoin with a more top down view similar to Pokémon – what else is in the future for your games? Any specific genre or platform you would like to build on? Is this a start of a bitcoin game studio, or a couple title passion project?
Hero:
Other than the sequel the only other things we are working on is merch. I’m working with Mars to maybe get a portable emulation console. As much as I’d love to have a Bitcoin gaming studio I don’t think there is enough interest but that could all change in the future as Bitcoin grows, so you never know!
John:
Thank you for taking the time to do an interview with Stackchain Magazine. On our spaces we like to end them with a last word – is there a last word you would like to leave our readers and where is the best place they can learn more or order Hero of Bitcoin?
Hero:
Just get them to follow me on twitter@HeroOfBitcoin and they can currently get the game and some merch here:https://copiaro.de/en/category/games/hero-of-bitcoin-en/
Note from Stackchain Magazine: No Bitcoin (or inferior monies) were exchanged for this article. This interview made by John for Hero of Bitcoin, Bitcoin only pixel artist and game developer.You can find HERO (of ₿itcoin) on X @HeroOfBitcoin on Nostr heroofbitcoin@nostr.theorangepillapp.com. If you’d like to send HERO some 丰 for the article you can do so via LNURL heroofbitcoin@walletofsatoshi.com