Hey, thanks a bunch! Development has been slow this year for a number of reasons, but your comment has given me a very welcome motivational boost. For the graphics thing, my main concern was just replacing asset pack assets and any rough draft designs. On the plus side, I'm actually getting pretty decent at enemy spriting, and I'm quite happy with how the enemies for the 3rd dungeon have turned out. They're not quite as good as the existing ones that oshf made, but they're good enough to make me feel confident that I can handle the rest of the enemy spritework myself.
I don't want to make the mistake of giving any dates or estimates again, but overall, dev progress has picked back up recently. And I'm feeling good about everything that isn't audio related. Still need to figure that one out lol.
Oh, dang. I somehow missed this comment. Thanks for enjoying the game, and thanks for the bug report! The copier was a late addition and I clearly didn't test enough of its edge cases lol. I'll have to look into fixing that one of these days.
Maybe I don't fully get it, but this game seems to be frequently unwinnable. And I don't get the weapon degrading system. Weapon cards can sometimes be used multiple times, but other times can't be? I'm not too sure. I really want to like the game--and I do like the main ideas--but it's just not exactly clicking with me. Seems like my critiques are more for the original game though, so don't take them to heart too much. As a port, I'd say that this is pretty solid.
This has got to be the most content-filled entry be a long shot. I mostly have minor nitckpicks, but please know that I really did like the game overall, even if it's way too long for me to ever finish.
Sudoku: The hint patterns or whatever they're called are genuinely cool and can be helpful, but I also found them to be distracting. Being able to toggle them on or off with like Select or something would be nice.
Takuzu: I had never heard of this game before. It's pretty neat. My suggestion here would be to either assign one color to A, and the other color to B, or to keep A as-is, and make B do the same thing, but with the reverse color order.
Mines(weeper): I wish it had that feature where you can click on a number and expose every other square around it if it already has the correct number of flags around it. And similar to sudoku, I found the helpful hint square thing to be distracting.
Tents: Another game that I had never heard of. I love Picross, and this reminded me a bit of that. And the graphics are adorable too. I expect that this will be the main thing that draws me back to this collection.
But yeah, overall a strong jam entry. I've gotta give a fellow GBDK brother some love, even if it's tough love lol.
Dang, this was really good. As in "I'll be stunned if you don't at least make it into the top 5 for this jam" good. Impressive microgame quantity, variety, and polish. And I loved the idea of adding the controls to the instructions screen. I did think that the time limits were overall too lenient, but I'm just nitpicking at this point.
I hosted a GB WarioWare jam a few years back. Not sure that I'll ever run another at this point, but if I do, I'll be sure to take copious notes on everything you did well with this game.
And to close things off with a random aside, my favorite microgame was probably the dashing knight dude one.
I've always kinda wanted to play the original, so seeing this entry was a nice surprise. Feels 1 to 1 with what I imagine the original is like, minus the audio of course. And big props to you for using RGBDS.
I like everything about this game... except I'm not that good at sliding puzzles. I used to be decent at the FF1 one back when I was a kid, but I've lost my touch. And somehow, these early-game 3x3 ones feel even more difficult lol. Go figure. I might have to slowly brute force my way through though because the game appears to be very charming and well made. How many puzzles are there in total, by the way?
My thumb died while playing this game, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. And I really appreciated how polished the game was, down to even having color palette options. I'm a sucker for customization and cosmetics. My score was 81 on easy, and that's probably where I'll leave things lol.
Fun take on Breakout. Making the blocks enemies that can shoot or move was enough to shake up the tired formula. And it goes without saying that the presentation in this game is top notch. My biggest complaint is that I finished the game and still wanted more. Well, that and I had a hard time steering the ball, but that's probably more of a me problem. I've never been that great at Breakout games.
Echoing what Roroto said, I also really enjoyed the Mole Mania influence. And overall, it was a solid game. My one complaint/critique is that I had a hard time with the movement being 8x8 tile based when the game itself is built around 16x16 tiles. Other than that, I had a good time with the game.
After having played every entry (at least to some extent), I've got to say that this was a surprising top 10 pick for me. The concept is fun, and the presentation is charming. True, the lack of balancing really does bring it down, but the core premise is promising enough to bump it up near the top of my rankings. I'm excited to see where you take things from here if you decide to continue development. Destructible blocks in particular sound like a fun idea.
I've updated the game. Not with a fix per se, but with a workaround that should hopefully make any crashes a minor inconvenience at worst. Thanks again for reporting the bug. I'll continue to look into it.
Yo. I had initially planned on doing this jam solo, but I ended up liking my game enough that I think it deserves to have people with actual skills contribute to it. Primarily, anyone who can do music and/or sfx. The quick elevator pitch for the game is that it's a card battler board game. Here's a link to what I have so far. The password is gbcompo2025. Give it a look to see if you'd be interested in working on it with me.
Feel free to reach out in this thread, on Discord (@bownly), or on Twitter (@Bownly). And hey, if you can't do audio stuff but would still like to contribute in some other capacity, reach out anyway. It can't hurt. I mean, it might hurt your feelings if I say no thanks, but I'll be nice about it lol.
Thanks. I wouldn't say that it was easy, but it wasn't too hard since I had some similar previous projects to pull code from. I used GBDK, which is a C based framework.
Thanks for the kind words. The reason that the visuals and music feel authentically Gameboy is because it actually is a Gameboy game lol. I never bothered testing it, but it should work 100% on real hardware.
Yeah, I think we're dying breed lol. GBDK devs, that is. I'm tempted to adapt this game into a mini-game and include it in my current larger project that I'm working on. And to add to that, I'd want to try coding in multiplayer for it. But that's all hypothetical and off the record. I don't want to over promise and under deliver.
Thanks for the tip. I kept dying on the last phase of 1-8, and I had to use that cheat to finish the game lol. I like it when game jam games have built-in cheats like that. Intentional, or otherwise.
The game is pretty cute and charming overall, and the last level (including the accompanying music) was a real treat. On the downside, I found the movement speed to be painfully slow.
I'm not saying that I'm guaranteed to win or anything, just that I want to be overly ambitious and enter with the intent to win. But the competition will be fierce. In order for me to stand any chance, I'll need to partner up with one or two other people. I can bring some decent enough coding and game design skills to the table, and ideally you can bring some audio and/or graphics skills. Although, I'm open to hearing out anyone who's interested in working together and has skills in any relevant field. Like, maybe you're really good at designing puzzles or level layouts or something. I dunno. You tell me.
You can check out my itch page (bownly.itch.io) for examples of some of my previous GB projects to get a feel for where I'm at in terms of dev skills. If you're interested, please shoot me a link to some of your past GB dev-related work. You can reach me here in this thread, on Twitter @Bownly, or on Discord @bownly.
The progression system was really enjoyable... after the first few levels. The start of the game was kinda brutal if I'm being honest. But overall, the game was great. Beautiful color palette, nice art, lots of charm, catchy song.
I thought it was cool how there were two separate planes. Not sure if that was tough to pull off from a technical perspective, but it was impressive nonetheless.
Neat idea for a puzzle game, but it seems like some levels become unbeatable if you put the first student into the wrong seat. I think it might be better if every student had an unchanging list of friends, and if there were a "next student(s)" queue. That might make the game feel more strategic, and less trial and error-y. Still pretty fun by game jam standards though.
Definitely a contender for best looking game. Not just in terms of graphics, but in terms of presentation too. The credits stage in particular was really well done. And the gameplay itself was cool and unique.
Thanks for the kind words! Btw, that no enemies glitch is actually because I uploaded an older build that predates the addition of the world 3 enemies. As it turns out, I accidentally only uploaded the final build in web embedded format. Once the voting period ends, I plan to replace the downloadable .gb file with the final build.
Lots of impressive visual polish for a game jam game. The transition between rooms, the bunny riding the SōdoDev logo, the mini GameBoy Showdown logo in the beginning, and the overall presentation of the discussion section. Good stuff.
All of the other comments already expressed everything great that I'd have to say about the game, so that frees me up to get a little nitpicky lol. I wish that there had been a way to swap the directions for the isometric movement. In most isometric games, pressing up will move the character to the top right. Playing this game felt the same as playing an FPS game with a non-inverted Y axis when you're used to inverted controls. But overall, the game was awesome.
