Oblique Strategies GB
Oblique Strategies is a deck of cards designed to help artists break up an art block. Each of the 100+ cards contain a possible action to take or a new way of thinking about a creative problem. They were created by artists Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in the 70s and have been updated with various new editions over the years.
This is a port of that deck of cards for Game Boy, for some reason.
It was made by me, Nicky Flowers, as a way to learn how GB Studio works. Turns out it works pretty well! I boot up the ROM on my DMG when I get stuck working on music or coding or really anything where I'm creating stuff. I hope you might find it useful too!
Also available for download is a version for Analogue Pocket systems!! Wowee!!!
I was tempted to add a cool chiptune soundtrack but I found it to be distracting when I was working on something with audio. That'll just have to wait for my next homebrew software >:)
I'm not officially associated with Brian Eno or anything (that would be cool lol), but if you want the real thing, you can get it directly from him! I don't think my version has all the cards this 5th edition printing does. https://www.enoshop.co.uk/product/oblique-strategies?filter=Oblique%20Strategies
If you really love what I did here, you can donate to my ko-fi with a nice message :) https://ko-fi.com/nickyflowers
Download
Install instructions
The Game Boy ROM file works on all original hardware and emulators. And I'm pretty sure the Analogue Pocket ROM works a charm too but I can't test for that.
Comments
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Hey there! I'm a writer, and I've been using Oblique Strategies for years to help me generate ideas. I actually designed a label to put on an actual cart. Thought you might appreciate it. Thank you so much for bringing this to Gameboy!
sorry i'm only just seeing this!! i think this label is gorgeous and i'm so glad to have inspired you to make it :)
Played on mGBA which works fine except the sound is f'd up- thew shuffle sound is all garbled/ear-assaulting and repeats endlessly once triggered. not sure if there is supposed to be some animation with the shuffle but if so nothing happens other than the awful sound. any tips to sort this out?
sorry about the loud shuffling noise! there's no animation missing or bug with the audio. i'll level with you–i'm not very good at programming yet and i mostly tested this on my DMG without headphones. it's not too bad that way. with headphones, i just turned down the audio since it's not that important to the program. i would recommend doing this (again, sorry, i know this is not ideal lol)
more info if u want: basically you only have tap the D-pad once or twice to seed the card RNG and hit A to pull a card/stop the noise. if you want to pull multiple random cards, you don't need to shuffle again until after a hard reset of the console (or you start getting a lot of repeat cards). hope this helps!
Incredibly creative use of GB Studio! I use a self made Oblique Strategies deck AND GAME BOYS in my creative process, so this is like the perfect intersection for me.