This was great fun, though I did get pretty confused with the whole item / opiate thing. Plus the game didn't seem to pause when I was in the menu so I died a few times whilst trying to work things out!
The feedback on the hits and the sounds are great and I like to little customisation of the scarf!
Did you build this in HaxeFlixel? This is the first time I've run into a game on itch built in it, how was the process?
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Extra Potion's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Fun | #5 | 3.917 | 3.917 |
Sound Design | #7 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
Overall | #9 | 3.583 | 3.583 |
Graphical Presentation | #11 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
Controls | #12 | 3.417 | 3.417 |
Era "Feel" | #17 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What style of retro game were you going for? (Year/Era/Console/etc)
2000s
Comments
Did you build this in HaxeFlixel? This is the first time I've run into a game on itch built in it, how was the process?
Yep, the game was written in Haxe programming language using HaxeFlixel engine. This engine does not have a graphical editor (only a fairly convenient debug menu in the game), the whole game is written in text editor (Haxe is better with VS code, for which there is an official extension), no dragging sprites or others (during development I almost did not touch the mouse). This may seem like something complicated and strange, but it's actually more convenient and faster than developing games in godot or unity, for example. But it is very inconvenient to "draw" tilemaps in the code, so you have to use third-party programs (I used tilemap editor LDtk)
HaxeFlixel is a relatively minimalistic engine, which gives a lot of possibilities in customizing the style of writing code, which I really, really love
HaxeFlixel has open source code, so you can see what this or that function does without leaving VS code. There is also documentation in the code itself, which is displayed in VS code when the cursor hovers over a function or parameter
I recommend trying to learn Haxe and write games on it, I think you won't regret it. This language is very undervalued. The syntax is similar to TypeScript mixed with C#, but Haxe was heavily inspired by ActionScript
I didn't specifically remove the splash screen (HaxeFlixel logo), because I want as many people as possible to learn about this fabulous language
This game has an awesome concept in building your own programmable powerups. Initially, it was a bit frustrating since I didn't know what each one did, but got more fun as I learned about the different parts and what they did — maybe you could include a manual with their different effects if you pursue this project further. The different enemy types provide a good variety of challenge, and the randomly-generated arenas keep things interesting, though there were times when I got stuck in parts of the arena that were too deep for me to jump out of.
One thing I am confused about, though: what do you mean by the game's era being the 2000s? To me, it looks a bit like a Pico-8 game.
One thing I am confused about, though: what do you mean by the game's era being the 2000s? To me, it looks a bit like a Pico-8 game.
I really like the style of pico 8 games and I couldn't resist...
The 2000s refer to the era of the game boy advanced (if I'm not mistaken, GBA supports 256 colors on the screen)
Looks, sounds, and feels awesome (especially with a controller). I love the map variations and the attack animations. The swipe on the golem creatures is particularly crunchy—I got used to dying to them. felt satisfying to occasionally prevail over one though, as does landing continuous swings on the smaller enemies and bouncing projectiles back at them. my avg score range is in the ~400s, highscore 840
You did a really elegant job with the visuals here. I think the use of solid distinct colors is plenty communicative and lends itself to the scarf-switching variety concept. I didn't parse exactly what each ability was doing or how they were fusing without reading your notes, but experimentation was fun, chaotically swapping things out while the scene runs in the background. the spawn bubbles showing up over the menu is a nice touch.
The limited palette reminds me of something made on PICO-8. Haxe seems really neat.
Excellent job on this!
Thank you!
The limited palette reminds me of something made on PICO-8
Yes, I was inspired by games made on pico 8, but used NES palette
my avg score range is in the ~400s, highscore 840
I didn't parse exactly what each ability was doing or how they were fusing without reading your notes
I think I should make some tutorial. In fact, it's not so difficult to get high score.
I was also inspired by dead cells(interesting fact: Dead Cells was written on Haxe too), where each enemy needs its own passage. As in Dead Cells, the enemies first swing before the attack, so that the player has time to react and get behind his back or reflect the projectile
The visual presentation is really nice, the music absolutely slaps. The controls feel good and the (seemingly) procedurally generated stages work well and never produced something broken.
Alas I am a scrub and despite many attempts I could never defeat enough enemies to use the custom powerups, but I think it's a really cool idea!
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