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(+2)

Once again time to get my ass beaten. I'm prepared. I'm hyped. You could even say I'm overconfident. Same as last time, writing as I'm going!

First off the bat, music is so nice, it sets the mode very nicely. A bit wonky with the volume of the bass, it would be nice to have it just a bit more consistent. Nice to see you playing with it though!

Not super fond of the jump, it's a bit too snappy for my taste. It's a taste thing though. I like jumps which are more dynamic, where you really can control yourself.

Nice first boss! Also nice that you heal up at the checkpoint, I feel that darksoulsieness oozing from it. It's a nice way to do it though, something where you have to survive a little longer that usually. A bit weak of a finished sound, didn't really feel like I actually just beat a boss.

That zombie walk though.

The background sharing a colour with the character is a nice touch, it just looks cool.

Player hitbox feels very very large, also I bonk the cieling with head, and then ran into the pit three times before I killed the first golden enemy. 

Second boss done, the switch to calm music is a bit jarring. Also I just realized that the stamina actually matter, I can't just buttonmash my way to victory as I usually do.

No transition between the screens are a bit confusing, just a lil pan would be nice, to keep you from getting disoriented.

"Time to beat up this random old guy". OK THIS IS AMAZING. I love that the character said exactly what I was thinking. I don't care what is on the end, I just want to beat this shit out of everything until I get to the end. I'm not playing this because I want to be rewarded, I'm playing this to get beaten into bits, and then come back and get beaten some more. Also explaining that there is a top is very nice. INSTANT SECOND PHASE YEEEEES. Alright I'm loving this. This is actually incredible. And I got him. I actually got him. 

All in all that was probably around 10 - 15 minutes that I actually played. And this is not the peak of what you have done, sure, but this was a really cool quick game. I'm guessing that this was a fun "alrighty let's try some new stuff", and I think you did an awesome job. Everything is a bit unpolished, and could have felt a bit better, but I love that this is experimenting with the "formula" that's been with all the other games. I'm forgiving all the jank in this though, it's just something different, it's rare that I feel this intrigued(?) by a game. I can't put it to words but there is something special here. I guess congratulations? You have really come far since I first played Dreams of D4rk, and you are keeping me hooked as hell for whatever will be released next. It's really inspiring. Thanks!

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Hello! Thanks for stopping by, love reading these.

The bass volume was something I had a lot of trouble with; I felt like I really wanted to be able to smoothly fade the notes out but I wasn't good enough at pico 8 production to get that to happen, so I just stuffed extra notes there with varying volumes, definitely not an elegant solution haha.

The jump / bonking on ceilings is also a bit of jank that I wish I had the tokens to fix. Glad it didn't take away from the experience too much. Room transitions was also on my "nice to have" list of features if I had the tokens for it, it definitely feels a bit jarring to go from room to room without any visual feedback.

On the final boss: When I make games I usually have a moment in my head that serves as the "seed" for the whole game; basically a moment that I use to build the rest of the game around. For this game, the final boss cutscene where he asks you why you're climbing was that 'moment', and the rest of the game kind of just emerged from that seed. Glad that moment felt good, it's my favorite part. Also the phase skip to phase 2 is something I'm really glad I added; multiple commenters have mentioned it being a nice QoL thing, so glad you found that helpful!

This game was definitely just a small side experiment, basically: "What if I made a soulslike but was literally unable to engage in feature creep (using pico 8 restrictions)" and this is what spawned from that. A decent amount of jank remains in the game partially due to some token restrictions, and partially due to poor planning on my part. Thanks a ton for playing and for all the feedback and kind words!

(+1)

I'm stealing the idea about having a specific moment everything is centered around, that's incredibly clever!