Dyox: a pretty nice PSP homebrew game
My PSP is over fifteen years old now but I still use it a lot. Recently, I beat the Dyox homebrew game, a top-down 2D puzzle game in which you control a marble around fifteen levels to solve puzzles by moving blocks, pressing buttons, etc., in order to reach a finish tile and move on to the next level.
The marble is entirely controlled with the analog stick, and it has nice acceleration and weight, bouncing around whenever it goes too fast. My PSP's slight motion blur makes it look like it's really rolling. I also liked solving the puzzles. Sadly, on PC, my controller is too precise and my screen not motion-blurry enough to make the game feel the way it did on console. As if, unlike some games on which the motion blur or controls felt terrible, or others where they could simply be ignored, Dyox was instead made perfectly to the PSP's specifications, taking even its negative attributes to make itself simply a nice game to play on that console in particular?
The game has no savefile support, instead you need to enter a password to get back to where you were. Thankfully, with CFW, I can take screenshots to save them. For the sake of whoever ended up here, there they are:
| Level | Password |
|---|---|
| II | □↑↑L ○←→R |
| III | |
| IV | ✖□○△ ↑←→→ |
| V | ←○→✖ ↑△→↑ |
| VI | L✖△↑ □↓↓→ |
| VII | R✖L△ ○○←↓ |
| VIII | →✖↓✖ ○↑△✖ |
| IX | ↓→△↑ ✖R○← |
| X | ←↑□← ✖□LR |
| XI | ↓△✖□ ○→△✖ |
| XII | ↑←△→ ○□✖↑ |
| XIII | →✖←△ →○↓△ |
| XIV | ↑✖△↓ ✖△→□ |
| XV | ↑↑↓✖ ○→○✖ |
Here is a screenshot of the first level:
Note the two-tile large black bar on the left side of the screen. The game is just like this and I am curious why. Let's dive deeper into it.
History
As mentioned on the itch.io page, Dyox was released in 2006 by Bright Night Games. Bright Night Games's website is down now, but it has been archived several times by archive.org.
According to the development page for Dyox, the developer explains that Dyox was developed in two months for a PSP Homebrew contest hosted by QJ.net in August 2006. It was inspired by Oxyd, an Atari ST game which has an open-source remake named Enigma.
The mystery of the black bar is solved here, as it was meant to be a status bar which went unused in the end; it would've held items and health information. The game was also meant to have more levels as well as multiple-screen levels.
I couldn't find the page for the QJ.net contest, and the page says that the game was pulled from that contest for unclear reasons. However, it was also submitted to the NEO summer coding contest 2006, where it was award 6th place in the PSP games category.
There is a screenshots page for Dyox on the Bright Night Games website, however none of them were saved by archive.org, which is unfortunate since it claims to have screenshots from early in development, before a graphics overhaul.