Talon's garden has been cursed! She asks her witch friend to help her out with breaking the curse, and has to go collect a few items to cast the necessary spell.

So far I have:

-motion & basic animations

-textboxes that freeze the player when you interact with 'em

-can interact with items that need to be picked up, receive 'em, have them disappear

-sprites for the various folks she'll meet

-two musical themes partially composed using Deflemask

Left to do:

-fix sprite flipping on Talon; additional animations if Talon gains abilities (probably won't since I don't know how I'd code 'em)

-design levels (5 planned)

-add "hazards" (planned: spikes that drop as you pass under them; puzzles w/ blocks to push)

-finish music composition

-menu / controls image assets

-end screen, possible 'game over' screen

Here's some shots of a test room I made to check that all the sprites I made are animating properly, and work on prototyping the text boxes and such:

I still need to fix my palette, too-- white and black and some shade of orange are definitely in (haven't decided which shade of orange yet), and either blue or purple. Going for Halloweeny colors! I know it's not Original Gameboy color compliant exactly but I kind of feel outclassed by most of the people's games on here either way, so I thought maybe I should embrace my lack of experience with pixel artistry and go for something weird.

Anyway! I'm feeling a lot better about this than I did when I couldn't figure out the text boxes. So yay!

Haven't been updating here but!

I've gotten a lot of things done, though! I'm super excited.

UPDATES:

* Spikes now can drop and, if you touch them, end Talon's journey early-- watch out for them!

* Talon can howl, causing wild berries to bloom and become edible!

* Game can loop back to beginning after hitting Game Over screen

* Menu screen implemented

* Collectibles can be collected, and Talon only chomps down if the collectible is a blooming wild berry!

* NPCs can be talked to

Most of what's left now is music and level design. I'm a little nervous it's taken me this long, but I think I should be done in time for the end of the Jam.

UPDATES:

Home stretch! Thanks to some help from folks in Discord, switched to composing music assets using BeepBox.co (was having problems with Deflemask's exports, unfortunately).

Level 1 designed, Level 2 in process. All deadly hazards implemented, though still need to add moving platforms / disintegrating platforms.

Weird glitch encountered where anything using the text box code in the same room as another thing using the text box code is triggered as if they're the same thing? Too tired to figure it out right now.

Tomorrow, hoping to finish up level designs for all 5 "exploring" levels and the home / central screen, as well as output a couple more musical themes so each zone has a unique one.

Some screenshots below; not currently using a tileset on the background (just doing color), but if I have time I'd like to try to make one, especially after seeing some of the great BG art others have been using here!