itch.io

Dang - look at all those entries! GG to Anthony for the win, but GG to you for that amount of hype!

This game looks and sounds interesting, but the controls and attack mechanics make it so much more difficult than I think it’s meant to be…

I don’t get it… I actually got all three correct one round, but it still says I lose? lol

Yessss!

Any plans on a physical release? This would be an amazing one to have CiB.

Glad I decided to check KS today. 17 days left (at time of posting)

Here’s the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/megacatstudios/echoes-of-the-unread-a-new-8-bit-musical-adventure

That’s cool, I mean it worked great on original hardware so you’ve got that going haha. I’ll make sure to check out the final game when it’s out!

It loads on my Everdrive, but am I correct that there is no jump button and no way to make it past the first screen?

Let’s goooo! I’ve played all your games - and while they’re fun to play through, you really outdid yourself with this one! It’s great to see it pop off like it has. Congrats!

You should add the “NES ROM” Tag to this so it shows up for people scouring the site for new stuff to check out on their NES.

Is it possible to complete the mine section yet? Got stuck at another dead end the other day… I at least figured out how to buy the boots and use the Inn lol

This doesn’t appear to work when commenting on peoples’ stuff, is that correct?

It would have been wild if there was some text in there that mentioned how the figure almost looked like your mom and made you feel an overwhelming guilt or something like that - to kinda tie it back to the "bad" ending you could get.

Works fine here, but when I try to drop it on the game, it just shows the raw HTML

Oh man, when you swing the fire poker at the thing behind you, it says you examine the body and note the dent in the skull...

(Apparently we can't do spoiler text in comments?)  So - spoiler below...)

It would have been wild if there was some text in there that mentioned how the figure almost looked like your mom and made you feel an overwhelming guilt or something like that - to kinda tie it back to the "bad" ending you could get.

A fun, horrific "Choose Your Own Adventure" style story for the NES.

(An honest review for anybody else wondering if this is for them)

I had my eye on this game for a while, but was always kinda on the fence.  While it's usually pretty easy to judge a game based on its screenshots and demo video, something like this is maybe a bit trickier, and the lack of reviews on it only made it more difficult for me to decide.  

I have always been a die-hard fan of adventure games of all types.  Games like Shadogate (NES), Uninvited (NES), the Hugo (MSDOS) Games, etc.  I never got big into pure text adventures like Zork, but I grew up with a love for Choose Your Own Adventure books and the Fighting Fantasy books that added RPG elements to the Choose Your Own Adventure style.

I think the most tl;dr point I can make is: If you consider this a story rather than a game, you will enjoy it more.  If you don't like stories, you probably won't like this one.

I hope my review helps whoever reads it  in making a decision.

The Good:

This story is a wild ride from start to whatever end you get.  There are some campy predictable outcomes, but there are also a lot of unexpected twists and turns.  It honestly kept me guessing and wondering through a lot of the game.  So much happens in such a short period of time that it will throw your expectations on what could happen next out the window and give you no choice but to submit to giving up and going for the ride, wherever it takes you.

The music does a great job setting the mood and atmosphere, and various small sounds along the way act as nice little embellishments to further set the mood.  The graphic elements do a good enough job at giving you something to visualize as you read through the text.  There are some areas where updated graphics may have been nice, but what was provided is sufficient enough.

The game also provides you with one checkpoint that you can set and overwrite at any time by pressing [start] on your controller.  Sometimes it would be nice to set more than one, but I think if you did that, you'd get so confused by all the branching out that revisiting more than two or three points back would leave you confused.  Note: Savestates on the Everdrive seem to work, but you'll find your game will lock up for a few seconds - same as when you load into a saved state.  Give it a bit,  and it will free itself back up and start working again.  Unless you really chart out what steps you took along the way, I don't necessarily recommend them. 

In honesty, I tend to not be a huge fan of reading, but this story is really fun and I've already put quite some time into going down various branching paths to see where it goes.  Often times trying to pick the wrong choice expecting an instant game over, only to find out that the game twists to keep me alive and rolling.

The Bad:

This game is, overall, well done.  My "bad" points are maybe minor nitpicks at best:  

The font - it would be great if it was only used to set mood, things like onomatopoeia, and quotes/things you hear.  But as the only font you'll see, I found it got difficult to read in bulk.  The unevenness of the lettering made it difficult to follow the lines of text after a while.  I strongly suggest checking out this ROM Hack provided by the dev if you feel the stock text is difficult, as it greatly improves readability.

The Inventory System is a bit confusing at first, as it may appear that you have items that you don't.  As explained to me by the dev, "Sometimes it represents actually possessing an item, while other times it's simply having knowledge of something that will enable additional choices later."  Keeping that in mind will help it make a bit more sense to you.

The Conclusion:
Recommend if you're looking for a fun story more than a game.

This game is great, and while the $10 may seem a bit steep, if you consider that a Choose Your Own Adventure paperback is around $9, I think it's reasonably priced.  There are a lot of forking paths that you can take, and every path I've taken so far has been a real trip.  Times you think you've won, you haven't.  Times you think you're surely gonna die, you find a way out.  

I think the important thing is to consider this more of a story than a game.  While there are lots of forking paths and decisions, there isn't really "free will" per se.  It's not a true adventure game like, say, Shadowgate or Deja Vu where you can make inconsequential decisions and have things you never needed.  It's far more in line with a traditional "Choose Your Own Adventue" book or Interactive Fiction experience where your fate is already decided and your outcome is just a branching path away.  This doesn't at all diminish its value, it's just an important frame of mind you need to have going in.

Being able to play this emulated on a handheld device (your phone, a DS, etc) before bed or where you normally do your reading will improve your experience with it.

That ROMHack looks perfect, thank you so much!  And good point about the parrot lol.   If you ever approach the game with an update and it's possible, maybe you could implement a different border or background for something you possess versus something you are aware of?  I'm gonna dive back in with this ROM Hack now.

This is really fun so far.  One thing I noticed was that, even though the text said I left the knife on the counter, it still shows in my inventory.  Not sure what happened there.

My only suggestion so far would be to improve the font and make it a bit more uniform.  The font used would be good in a game that isn't so text-heavy, but I'm finding it difficult at times to read with the amount of text in the game.

[EDIT] This run keeps getting weirder... is the top row not my inventory?  The story suggests that I would have to go back inside the house to get the poker, but I think that's it in the rightmost slot?

Ohhhhh -  I just saw the YouTube video on the page.  Yeah, I did the same thing as the guy in the video, tried to go up directly in front of the door.  Only difference is that I never tried going up one of the sides haha.

It makes sense now that I know, but at the time that dark spot looked like it was a ramp or pathway up to the porch, not a block that you had to walk around.

One possibility for block-drop items could be just to reduce the chances of them spawning items.  This could also allow enemies that can only be destroyed by rockets to be in trickier configurations where you may need to rely on item farming from blocks.

I didn't get a chance last night - I was saving it and another game for the end because I expected the rest of the homebrew stuff to take far less time to get through than it did.  It'll be on my list for tonight, though :)

I'm making what feels like progress.  I don't need any hints yet, but knowing that it is actually solvable and I'm not just getting lucky by picking up patterns that don't exist is good to know.  I love games like this where there's so much more happening than just the game itself.  Yeah, the ROM is short - but there's this whole puzzle here.  I also chuckled at the braille code on the paper.  I don't speak Italian, but I was able to confirm my suspicions with Google haha

Spoilers of decoded English messages below. Note the final message has a minor whoopsy with one of the glyphs in a few words...

[EDIT] Solved!  The end message has some typos - the "T" and "S" characters are similar, and I guess those dang aliens just weren't totally fluent in earthly languages and made a minor mistake, but once the fusion completed, it all made sense ;)

The final message decodes to:

WELCOME
SHE FUSION WAS SUCCESSFUL
PROCEED WISH SHE MISSION

It should be:

WELCOME
THE FUSION WAS SUCCESSFUL
PROCEED WITH THE MISSION  

Here's how the boot sequence decoded for me.  Only word I'm not totally confident on is "ENROACH":

SYSTEM BOOT... COMPLETED
HUMAN DETECTED AT THE CONTROLS
CALCULATING POTENTIAL SPREAD
HIGH POTENTIAL
GENETIC STRUCTURE COMPATIBILITY
STRUCTURE COMPATIBLE WITH DRONES
CELL CHECK
CELL NO [RELEASED]
CELL SO [DECEASED]
CELL NE [HIBERNATED]
CELL SE [DECEASED]
COGNITIVE INFO REQUIRED
STARTING ENROACH PROGRAM CELL N 

Really short, but a fun concept!  I wish there was more weird stuff that happened, though.  I love that brief glitched-out static section.  All the lore behind the game is neat,  too.

Question - is the "encrypted" text at the boot and end screens decryptable?  I've been kinda chipping at it and it looks like I'm making some progress but the whole thing could be stupid luck lol

 

No prob!  I'll keep an eye open for the update and give it another go when it comes.   It worked without issue on actual hardware using an Everdrive, too.

This was a fun one to run through.  Plays great on original hardware, too!

The music and visuals are awesome, but the powerups are almost useless because they seem to only last for a second or less.

Any chance on getting an NTSC version?  The game crashes on original hardware and emulator if you try running it in NTSC instead of PAL.

You need to explicitly tell your emulator to run in PAL.  Your emulators are working fine - the game crashes the same way on my NTSC NES (using an Everdrive) as it did in Retroarch running the Mesen core, but if I changed the region from "Auto" to "PAL" the game ran fine.

Jokes aside,  it took a bit to figure out how to get past the first scene with the ladder, but this was your best game yet.  I really liked how you did the end bit of the game,  with that smug sheep looking at us when we went the wrong way lol

"Babe wake up, new mechanic dropped!" I said, as I realized we could now jump with the [Start] button.  What a fantastic and fresh take on classic old boomer-ass controls.  Maybe

Shigeru Miyamoto should have thought about that when making Mario.

It goes without saying, but:
Minccraft: 10/10

Super Mario: -99/10 

Is this part of the main story, or just a side-quest so to speak? I notice that there is a Chapter 1 and 2, but this one does not have a chapter noted.  Thanks!

This is fantastic!  The demo gets you introduced to the basics and a boss fight.  The graphics are aesthetically pleasing, the music is great, the game controls well.  This one is a huge win to me.  Looking forward to the full release when it comes!

This game is an interesting concept, but I couldn't figure out what exactly to do.  When I got to the town, the game suggested talking to a Merchant, but I couldn't enter any of the buildings and eventually hit  a dead end, no merchant to be found.  I realized I was able to backtrack a bit and go north at one point - this took me to a mine, but it also ended in a dead end...   The concept is cool, but I think the level design needs some work so it's more clear where we need to go or what we need to do.

This game controls hilariously well for what it is.  Took a few tries, but I was finally able to get the "Win" screen without entering a glitched area haha.

For anybody interested, this is another NES sokoban-style game made with puzzle.nes.science.  The puzzles are okay, but the stages are a bit hard to orient yourself on in that there are gaps that you think you can take advantage of, but are actually part of the wall.  The last level was significantly trickier than the ones before it.

The last 4 eggs were brutal to find, but thanks to the screenshot on here I figured it out.

I absolutely died laughing at the end game where the...

[spoiler below]

...rabbit is cooking an egg for the chick.  Brutal

I've had my eye on this game for a while, but debated getting it because of the price and lack of reviews or comments.  Well, I decided to bite.  I'll give it a go tonight and try to remember to give it a proper review.

I was able to stream it a while ago, but I can't remember what I did.  If you're doing a "Game Capture" source, try a "Window Capture"  Or, I guess you could do a "Display Capture" and just crop it down to the game.

Rad!  I'm not sure what most people scrape, but I usually tell people to search itch by the "NES ROM" tag to find the stuff that runs on original hardware.  A lot of the other tags are a bit of a mix of actual NES games and "NES Inspired" games. My buddy @Skunky48 on Twitch was the one playing it.  I'll probably give it a go this weekend, too but I only average like 3-4 people per stream haha

You should add the "NES ROM" tag to this.  I def would have missed it if it weren't for one of my Twitch friends playing it

Kinda broken, but the demo was fun to check out.

Hilarious concept.  This was a blast to get through.  Not sure I understand that debug mode you hid in there though lol