The Tiny TV Jam was a game jam that challenged developers to take a Tiny TV cartridge and make a game inside of it. The game needed to be on a 10x11 screen. You could also change the TV itself and the background behind the TV. I am going to refer to the default TV that they downloaded as a TV, even if it was changed for their game. This might be a bit confusing, but keep in mind that everyone started with a base TV that they could then customise to turn into something that matched their game. I was able to play and record all of the games entered into this jam in my video compilation series. Below are a few of my favorites, in no particular order.

Caves of Izrod is a simple but well made maze/puzzler where you must rescue your friends and guide them to the exit. Your friends (the yellow rectangles) are at different points in a fairly open maze-like area. You must get to them, and then guide them to a blinking yellow dot towards the start. These friends of yours do walk more slowly than you, so going too fast will result in you losing them. There are monsters (represented as red rectangles) that you must avoid. If you get caught by a monster, the level will restart. However… if your friends are caught they will die! Some of these levels are very challenging, so it often forces you to step back and watch how the enemies move, before making the decision to move forward. Pay attention to your friends and help them out of this strange place! The TV used in this game took the form of a computer, complete with a joystick, floppy disk, and a keyboard. There is even a little note stuck to the side of the PC.

Apple Town is a tiny farming game where you are looking to grow apple trees! You have your own house and a lot of land to build on. You must use your various tools to hoe the land, water it, and plant apple trees. You need to keep watering the trees when they need it, until they grow and produce apples. Then you can harvest the apples and grow more trees! Your selection of tools include; a watering can to water the plants, a hoe to dig up the ground, a basket to collect the apples, and a magnifying glass which shows you a beautiful pixelated closeup of what you are looking at. The plots of land will blink when they need something, and you can use your magnifying glass to make a closer examination in order to solve what they need. Though this game is tiny, the close ups are beautiful. The TV for this game has been turned into a giant apple TV!

Tiny Dr. Piccolo is a Tetris-esque game where colored rectangles drop from the top of the screen. These rectangles are composed of two squares - sometimes of the same color and sometimes of different colors. You need align blocks of the same color into rows of four, after which they will disappear off of the screen. These two blocks are attached to each other, so even if there is a blank space between one side of the block and the floor, it will not fall until the block that is caught on another block has disappeared. At the beginning of the game, there are a few blocks that are flashing their color at you, sometimes floating in the air. Your goal is to eliminate these blinking blocks by matching them with blocks of the same color, so they disappear. Once you do that, a pill will appear on the screen, and you will move onto a new level. The TV for this game has been turned into a really nice looking pill bottle, to match the name and theme of the game.

Frequency Does Matter is a simple but challenging game that has you sending humans to take over alien planets. Your planets are green and full of humans that are willing to travel. Pink planets are controlled by aliens who are looking to take over the galaxy. Grey planets are not controlled by anyone, and instead can be claimed by sending some people to it. You must take over all of the planets on the screen to move onto another level. Both green and red planets will produce more aliens and people over time, so controlling more planets gives you more power in the universe. You can shuffle your people to the planets near them - if you are moving them to green planets they will become a part of the population, if you move them to the red planet’s they will fight. If you successfully fight off an alien planet, you will turn it green! Your goal is to turn them all green, which requires you to move people around to different planets quickly. The TV screen for this game is quite simple, with a satellite-type thing attached to the back and stars shining on the background!

Tiny Escape! is a fairly simple game where you are a cube trying to go to the bottom of the screen. At first, the platforms will move up the screen slowly, and if you are on it you will move too. You need to make it to the hole in the platform and fall down to the next platform (or bottom of the TV) to stay alive. This game ramps up the difficulty quickly. soon the platforms are ascending really quickly and you have to be careful and considered with every move you make, so that you manage to stay towards the bottom. You must be very quick to survive for any length of time in Tiny Escape! This game has a really awesome TV - it looks like the inside of a cave covered in rocks, with an enormous skull on top. The background is covered in torches. Even though the TV screen doesn’t have detailed graphics, the TV really sets the tone for the game!

My First Nuclear Reactor is a mysterious game made up of smaller mini-games that are not explained at all. You have gotten your hands on your first nuclear reactor. There is no instruction manual, so you must figure out what each of the fast paced games requires you to do, or you will run the risk of the machine exploding. Some games require you to push the correct key in correspondence to a colored cube dropping down the screen, while another has you avoiding rectangles flying across the screen, another wants you to guide a line of rectangles into a hole in the wall on the other side of the screen, and one even has you bashing the X and Z keys to keep a level inside the correct area. If you fail at any of these tasks… your reactor will start to detonate!. You then must push the correct keys that appear on the screen as rapidly as they appear, hoping to return it to a stable state. If you do this, you will just move onto the next game. Over time, the screen will start to look glitched, with blinking pixels just remaining on the screen, making each game even more challenging due to things you cannot see. Attempt to figure out what is going on here, and with any luck, you will soon you will be the master of your nuclear reactor. This TV is very well made - it’s a strange looking machine with some arranged on top of it!

Pac-Man is a procedurally generated Pac-Man styled game where you must consume all of the blocks that compose the floor to clear a level! Each time a level begins, you must rush around eating all of the dark blue tiles on the screen. There are 2 “ghost” blocks that also move around the screen. If you run into either of them you will die, the TV will shake a bit, and you will respawn at the starting point of the screen. If you die three times, the game is over. You can also eat blinking blocks in the game to turn the ghosts blue and make them edible. The game itself is pretty simple, but with tons of procedurally generated levels to go through, every time you play is unique. The TV for this game has been turned into a beautiful Pac-Man arcade machine with a couple of Pac-Man ghosts pictured on the background.