headphones recommended! this is a nice little puzzle game with moody sound design, interesting ideas and steadily climbing complexity. took me ~30min to complete, which is pretty much the best duration for this kind of a puzzler.

A reasonable decision! :D Keeping it up as we speak!

i'm actually in a similar development phase with emuurom atm so a teaser video could be a smart thing to mamake next!

nice teaser! the water mechanics look quite......... deep

(sorry)

i know, right! every finished game seems like a miracle at this point lol. and EMUUROM isn't even that big!?!

vivid and powerful story, atmospherically framed with glichy graphics and ambient tunes!

oozes charm! the games were fun, but the most exciting thing about this were the transitions - what is it going to be next?

i wish i got more tries for minesweeper, i accidentally clicked on an obvious mine on a first go, and then got a starting point of only one tile for the second game, after which it already ended...

feeling honored, thanks! the full game will be even better...!

I do have, in fact! You're warmly welcome! https://discord.gg/W8MTQ3MdU8

Thanks, these messages mean a lot!! I've been busy at work for a few months but now I'm starting to have more time to work on EMUUROM again. A bit unsure if I get to finish it this year like I promised in the trailer but I aim for an early 2021 release, at least!

thanks!! ^^

oh, and congrats for winning the jam! :>

nice little sokoban! the four-directional bark gives the puzzles just the right amount of complexity. also, the gradual palette shift is a cool effect, and fits the theme. i'm currently stuck on level 10, but i'll resume later..!

Thanks for the insights!

The tricky caterpillar jump is something I could try adjusting by just making its collision box a bit wider. I do want the game to have hardcore platformer challenges as well, but in the demo area I would like every player to at least reach the scanner first...!

Designing this kind of a game is like walking a tightrope in a cramped room lol. I'd like to add as much breathing space to the rooms as possible but, like, w h e r e. The interconnectedness of adjacent rooms gives me, as a designer, very little breathing space, so unfortunately that is reflected on the player on many occasions. What a problem have I generated for myself!

Anyway, the design of room 34 is something that i'm not perfectly happy with yet. It should be the last exercise before the end of the tutorial area, but maybe there's just too much to take in at once.

I made a small change to the room recently (not sure if additions are really helping lol): Otukka the caterpillar is there! Hopefully its presence gives the player a subconscious idea where they should be heading.

Thanks for the, umm, thanks! And for feedback! Nice to hear that the 'alien-ness' of the world is coming through, and that the scan entries are working as intended! ^^

As for the platforming challenges - I aim to make some of them less frustrating in the full version. Which room(s) in particular made you quit, if I may ask? :D

Demo area map with room numbers:

The game boy color aesthetic lured me in, and the exploring-by-solving-puzzles loop kept me hooked. Akurra is fantastic - I had to play all the way through the demo on one sitting. There was just enough loose ends available at all times so that if I got stuck in one puzzle, I could just go look around for other mysteries to solve (and there seemed to be a plenty of them!).

When the end screen finally showed up, i audibly gasped - OH NO it ended already!! And that, if something, is the best feeling a demo can give. 

...And to be fair, the demo was also much longer than I initially expected, and there was just the right amount of puzzles left after the play-through that I gotta return and 100% it. (my completion time and rate: 1h 33m, 75%)

This will be a day one purchase for me.

ooh i'd love to see more!

wait, you made this before textri! super impressive

Thanks for your kind words, and congrats for almost completing the demo!! (Though there are some off-bounds secrets as well to be found....)

Also, great to hear that the creature and area names are resonating, I know my silly eastern finnish words aren't that easy for the english-speaking world to remember, let alone pronounce... :D 

Because TIC-80 can't export Android builds atm, it's a bit tricky, but possible! Note however that because the game is not optimized for Android, FPS drops are common (especially when scanning).

If you want to try it out anyway, here's the instructions!

1. Buy the PRO version of TIC-80 (it's $5). Download and install the apk for your Android device (you have to allow installing from unknown sources in settings).

2. Download the .lua version of EMUUROM demo and move the file to TIC-80's data folder. For me it was located in /sdcard/Android/data/com.nesbox.tic/files/TIC-80/

3. Open TIC-80, and type in the following commands:

load emuurom-0.1.i.lua

run

And you're good to go! Bluetooth controllers can be used to play the game, but onscreen controls are also available.

thank you! these comments fill me with determination. :)

thanks! i'm aiming for 2020 release - there's still quite a lot work left, but i believe i can make it!

Thanks, and congrats for 100%-ing the demo! If you want to take a look behind the curtains, there's some out-of-bounds content left to be found...!

OKAy i love this?!?!? The enthusiasm! The dynamics! And my god, the pronunciations! My finnish ass was NOT prepared for them lol (and I'm def going to say kehreejä that way from now on!)

damn! thanks for letsplaying (it's the first!)

gonna watch this right away->

lyle in cube sector was a formative game for me in many ways. I'm super impressed by the attention to detail in your recreation, it's great to see others have been found joy in lyle as well.

Oof, first bug report is already in. I guess 0.1.i will eventually happen....

You need to obtain the scanner first!

haha thanks! working on it as we speak!

https://borbware.itch.io/emuurom

Wish I could pin comments lol. I mean, it's an actual cohesive review, I really appreciate it!

So yeah! Many of the bugs that can be used to your advantage are indeed totally unplanned, and in many cases discovered by other people than me. Naturally, I've chosen to leave them in, as they double as hidden cool mechanics and speedrun strats! 

Mystery, exploration and getting lost are indeed important themes for me, so I'm quite cautious about adding any hand-holdy tutorials in the beginning, as it might change the tone - as you speculated. THEN AGAIN, I'd like to make this game accessible to as large audience as possible, so I should address it somehow.

Answer for the accessibility problem could be something I've long yearned to make: a game manual! That's the next thing I'm gonna do for EMUUROM: A Retrobiologist's Field Guide, a short journal that explains the UIs, basic mechanics, behaviour of some EMUUROM and tells the backstory of the protagonist. And if you want to go in blind, it would still be possible; you could just read the guide afterwards! 

Btw, I finally embraced the puzzle aspect of the game and added it as a tag. 

Thanks for the feedback, this is valuable data that makes EMUUROM better still (and maybe more importantly, fills me with determination)!

What an exciting game! i finally beat the boss with the third weapon, it was quite tough!

Graphics and music reminded me of Environmental Station Alpha, gameplay of Space Impact. The level had a nice ebb and flow difficulty curve, and the three weapons gave a reason to try again after dying. 

This is surely a welcome addition to the fantasy console scene (and the first game I've seen made with a pre-release v0.80 of TIC-80!). I'd like to see a post-jam version of this one day!

thanks for playing! ^^ 

The first bird room has been a source of frustration for some players, but I'm at odds with it atm - it seems to partly work because it in fact should teach that momentum is preserved when jumping from a moving platform. That being said,  it shouldn't do that through frustration, though! :D

And then, the scanner lines!

They are 8 lines (4 red, 4 yellow) that increase in length by 2 pixels every frame until they collide with something. The rotation angle phi_i of an individual ray i is calculated with

phi_i = phi_0 - phi_max * sin(0.02*t + pi/8*2*i)

where phi_0 is the center direction (that the player can manipulate), phi_max is the half of the ray cone "width" angle and the sine term changes per time t and ray i.

So your guess wasn't that far from the truth!

Ah, the missing bird bug resurfaces. I've no idea atm why and how it happens. :D What I've gathered is that the bird should return after the player goes a few screens away and then comes back, but it's still a guessing game...

Oh, the vertical air shaft? I thought THAT was the hole next to Mt. Sus you were asking about earlier :D it's not important (yet). 

hint: there is a hidden path nearby to get past the waterfall pit.

Also, nice to hear that the controls "clicked". I'm still pondering if I should tweak them a bit, but this reassures that platforming physics are at least 95% complete.

Thanks for your comments hygge! my paragraph-by-paragraph answer follows:

I've for a few years wanted to make a "biologist game". Then the idea collided with an already-existing post-jam platformer, and they fused into EMUUROM.

Snail shortcuts are tHE BEST. Also, there is a map screen, but its button is currently only told in one of the 'tombstones', or virstanpylyväät. 

[it's the S key]

I'll consider adding more holes to the ground (through which the scanline is seen in the secret tunnels)! That might change the aesthetics of the tilesets considerably, tho, which means design work (note also: i am lazy)

Slipperiness of movement is mentioned enough times already for me to do something about it.

There will be a few emuuroms that are designed around pausing :) 

The "future path" phasing is indeed just a visual thing

                                             for now

maybe I should add an easter egg to the endscreen as well...

:D Luckily, there is indeed more to be found in the demo, see my answer to your second message :>

1. Only from the above.

2. It's possible to get into the other side.

3. Not unfortunately :(

4. ^ See 2. ^ 

I'd suggest you to try it again, 
no one has made it yet.

Extremely addictive game mechanic! Creating a rectangle, shooting it and hitting a target is veeeeery satisfying, and sound design is playing a big role here. I suspect that after a longer session, a tetris effect would be apparent. :D I'd drop the jumping triangle, tho - having to tiptoe around it distracts from the main mechanic, especially at higher speeds where you just want the player to zen out

GREAT TO HEAR, THIS IS THE INTENDED EXPERIENCE (save for the abrupt ending,) MORE COMING SOON!!

haha, didn't even consider that interpretation! I moved the plant one tile right so it should be less ambiguous in the next update.

Ps. Nice to hear that you like the music! You can also listen to (an older version of) it on my soundcloud: :D https://soundcloud.com/oggborbis/sets/tic-80-chiptunes

Thanks for extensive feedback! ^^ Great to hear that level design does its job, as I'm not that experienced on the matter, hehe.

I'll try to smoothen out some of the trickier jump sections, especially those in the first bird room for the next release 0.1.e. And I guess I should also work on the tilemaps, too! Which tile was the one you thought was part of the background?

And yup, it's is tricky to deliver a steady 60fps on browser, and for optimization I can only do so much (but I'll try to work on that, too.)