The story of EASTPIXEL
What happened first
founded in 2022
Right after christmas 1992, I took my savings and bought a Nintendo® Entertainment System bundled with Super Mario Bros. 3. Today, thirty years later, I'm designing pixel graphics in three colors to bring them to life on the Nintendo® Famicom and NES®, using Assembler 6502. That's how it is to be a nerd.
It's me, Christian, founder of EASTPIXEL.
Making analogue and digital art?
Making my own has always interested me more than consuming. That's why I started writing in 1996. After four books, I founded my own book publishing company "EASTWORD" in 2019 and published my fifth book, as well as others, simply by myself.
It's the same with video games. I was born in 1981. I grew up in the ideal time when it came to video games. A lot of the basics of today's modern games were conceived and invented during this period.
Me with Goetz, playing on the CPC 464
My first own computer was a Schneider/Amstrad CPC 464, initially only in its original condition with a cassette drive, later supplemented by a 3" and 5 1/4" floppy disk drive, a dot matrix printer and a light pen for drawing on the monitor.
I started developing my own video game "Singh's Revenge" in the early 1990s, but didn't get very far. The reason for the distraction was a lot of new input from the Commodore 64, my first console, the Atari 2600 Junior, my first console I bought myself, the Nintendo Entertainment System and my first PC.
Game development died out, writing and other projects became more important.
Book, EASTWORD, 2022
On March 21, 2022, the anthology "Lyric of the Year 2021" was published by EASTWORD-Verlag, a collaboration with a total of 60 authors. In order to connect two worlds (poetry and computer games), although they have no direct connection, the idea came up to publish the book not only in printed form and as an e-book, but also as a version for the Nintendo Gameboy.
Anna in Time's a thief (GB demo)
The simple mechanics are to control the character Anna through levels and collect scrolls. The opponent is a countdown that constantly counts from 10 to 0. Once it reaches 0, the game ends. Each scroll you collect resets the countdown to 10 seconds, giving you time to progress further in the game.
The number of scrolls collected determines how many texts will be readable at the end of the game.
A demo of the game was well received by the testers, but the Game Boy's technical limitations (colors, physics, memory) made me start re-imagining the game and developing it for the NES instead.
ANNA The magic of words, 2023
EASTPIXEL's first official project is Anna: The Magic of Words.
The name of the character got the name of the game and the concept has changed a bit. If you'd like, join me on the journey from idea to finished game by following this blog or by following me on Facebook, Instagram, itch.io or Twitter.