When the Tiny Games Challenge was announced, I really debated whether I should enter it or not. After all, I was explicitly called out in the announcement. It would be very unfair to the other participants if I entered one of my projects that I have been polishing for over five years. So I initially decided not to enter.

But recently I have been preparing for a workshop on becoming "full stack game dev", that is, on building your own game console and then making games for it, and while I did that, I looked through some of my old prototypes, and I realized that all of them were made to either be very minimalist in terms of parts used, or to explore a certain cost-saving technique, like making as much of the device out of PCB, for example, or seeing how many capacitors I can skip in the design before it stops working. I never really built anything "proper", because initially I simply didn't have the skill to do it correctly, and later on I was chasing interesting hacks.

So when I was ordering PCBs, I decided to quickly make another handheld game console, but this time made properly, without hacks, without requiring special batteries or having weird switch for the power, or using the minimal number of parts. Just a normal, solid design, that is not an exercise, but something to actually use as a base for further projects. And since I used a XIAO footprint for the microcontroller board, I can also use it to experiment with new microcontrollers coming out every year.

And when the PCBs arrived today, and I assembled the prototype and got it working, I decided to enter it into the contest after all. It's not going to compete with people who have build very innovative designs, or people who really focused on coming up with a fun game. I didn't even program a special game for it — I just ported the Pew library, so that all the PewPew games, such as snake, tetris, sokoban or othello will work on it. But I think that it can be used for learning, and as a base for future projects. Things like tamagotchi clones, flipper zero wannabes, or control panels for home automation.