Shutterbug alters and resizes your browser window so that you can take some great pictures of charming little bugs in the woods.
Dad’s broken your camera, but don’t worry, he’s set it up so that you can still take pictures using a brand new technology that’s built to scale. That’s the story behind this GMTK Game Jam 2024 entry by Rianna Suen, Dan Emmerson and Dan Pugsley (each sure-fire candidates for smartest-in-the-room). In it, you’ll resize your browser window (which does mean it’ll only work on desktop computers) and scoot it around your main screen in order to capture a great shot of the various insects and minibeasts that now roam it.
You’ll progress by taking nine photos, each of which require certain insects in them and also need the photo to be of a set type — portrait, landscape, or square. You’ll also often need to make sure that another, specific, insect doesn’t invade the shot. What you end up with is a few minutes of you resisting the urge to try and use your mouse or keyboard to slide the browser around, instead resizing it to track down the little beasties you need – almost like you’re creating a window through your main monitor.
It’s incredibly clever, especially for the modern day, considering that, outside of games like Rusty’s Retirement, the idea of a partial desktop/window game is a novelty. It’s fantastically done, and feels both intuitive and novel, but most importantly it’s incredibly approachable and warm. There’s a familiarity in watching bugs – in studying a tiny insect world. It conjures up memories of simpler times.
I especially enjoy that, at the end, you get to see each of the pictures that you have taken. While I doubt that many people would download the photos, I’d love to think that, somewhere out there, there’s somebody sharing the game and photos with a family member or friend, excitedly chattering about how cool it is and the potential for loads of different worlds and settings for this exact kind of thing.
Shutterbug is playable now (for free) on itch.io.
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