this is a good first game! i can tell you put a lot of effort into it.
some notes on the jam restrictions to keep in mind for future GBJams:
- you should not have mouse input anywhere in the game, even the main menu. otherwise, the controls match the jam restrictions.
- you mostly stuck to the 4 color rule, but there are some extra colors around the edge of the screen that you missed and your dialogue box also doesn’t match the palette. you can see from this screenshot where i have removed the text in Aseprite. there are six colors (check out the palette swatch squares in the upper left corner of the image).
- your font adds yet another color (white) and the anti-aliasing adds hundreds of extra grays around the edges of the letters to make them look smoother. these all count as colors.
- your resolution also isn’t actually 160x144 because your fonts are at a much higher resolution. the ending screen looks to be about 640x600 base resolution and actually has hundreds of colors in it.
other thoughts:
- it doesn’t make much sense to have a choice to go to sleep at the bed since there is nothing else to do. maybe you had planned for more though?
- the different music in the second dream really helps to add to the nightmare feel. nice job on that!
- the ending seems abrupt and doesn’t conclude the story in my opinion. it would have been nice to add some kind of narration there or something. i feel like some kind of narration between the two dreams would help too. why does the character have a nightmare? what changed that might have caused that?
- it would be cool if there was a way to avoid or defeat the creature at the end of the second dream and have a different ending. maybe you intended to do something like that but ran out of time?
nice work on this though. i hope you keep making games and you join the jam again next year!