itch.io

Not much time left to write a lot, just want to say that I find this really neat, quick arcade-y gameplay with lots of interesting adverse effects. Didn't get very far though, cause I couldn't figure out what to do when bullets started to bounce off enemies.

Cute looking game with nice music! I only played a little bit since time is running out for ratings, but I found it a bit frustrating when fish escaped into the rocks and it doesn't seem like there's a way to catch them anymore because they come out again but not enough to give me a chance to get to them before they disappear again. (I guess there might be shop items that help with that, but without an indication that this would be the case, the situation is pretty frustrating.) Otherwise, overall quite a pleasant experience.

Don't drag yourself down by saying "like zelda but bad". It's quite well put together for a first game jam. Everything works well, you've got some decent enemy variety and get more interesting use out of the shield than some Zelda games. Cute protagonist and story, too.

Oh, haha, the game spawning a tenth ghost is a bug. Didn't expect it to come up, though it might actually a bit easier with slowdown. (The current version isn't very efficient for browsers cause it spawns all the cars and obstacles at the same time. I reworked that completely for a post-jam update so hopefully that'll run a bit better.) Thanks for the feedback!

I like the frog! Good graphics that are very true to NES (except maybe the enemies rotating when defeated, though you could technically do that with extra sprites). The music compositions are good, but maybe the instruments could be tweaked for the in-game music, cause it felt a little bit grating on the ears. And the scrolling from screen to screen feels a little bit glitchy. Short (I made it in 2:15) but good.

Very representative of what a cartoon game would look and feel like on the NES (like Kirby or Gimmick!), only a few graphics that seemed directly inspired from other NES games seemed a bit out of place (like the tree trunk platforms and some Castlevania-like enemies). The yoyo gimmick is fun and feels very smooth and polished. I like that there's lots of little secrets to discover in the town, and the action feels very fair and forgiving thanks to the short stages and intuitive controls. Excellent entry!

Funny story! Game feels good, although a little slow (mostly the walking speed and the fade-out transitions between scenes). The mechanic with holding the button for strafing doesn't seem too useful and sometimes attacks don't come out right, it seems because my presses are detected as holds? Otherwise quite nice.

I have a bit of a claustrophobia problem with games that put such a close view limit with a hard edge around the player, but I like the art and music.

The precision platforming was too hard for me, so I didn't make it very far. Game seemed nice and quite polished so far. Can't give too much feedback for what little I could play, but one thing: When sliding a wall all the way down, the character remains stuck to it, but I think it would fit the game more if he immediately started running in the opposite direction once he gets to ground level.

I see cat, I click! Very cute game, but quite hard. I agree with previous posts that it would be great to have more insight into where each enemy can see you, and some way to recover after you've been spotted, like hiding in special places or something.

Understandable wanting to have a memory. If you find you'd still like to work on the game, you could always make a new page and call this one "original jam version" or something.

Gotta admit, I'm not usually a big fan of this type of turn-based RPG, but this had enough cool ideas to keep me interested throughout. The goofy characters and enemies are very creative, lots of fun writing, and I like that each party member has their own unique set of perks. That interlacing effect when enemies are defeated is a nice touch. Very atmospheric town, although I feel the music doesn't match the mood, especially while fighting. I beat Toni. (Full disclosure: I played on easy mode.)

Cool idea, I like the many ways you play around with the shadows, like the flags and such. It would be nice to have some kind of more immediate feedback when you're being hurt, maybe just something simple like having the player sprite flashing bright or something like that.

Cute character sprites and good music! There seems to be a stray pixel a bit to the left of the rabbit when jumping and crouching while facing right during fights in the cave.

Interesting concept with the field-of-vision, though it ends up making a large part of the screen very dark, which isn't so appealing to look at. It would be nice if you could move a little faster. I couldn't quite figure out how blocking works.

The music's so great! Cute little arcade game, I feel like there could be a bit more threat/pressure in some of the levels.

Cute and challenging puzzle platformer! I wish my attack range was a little bit longer, cause often I'd miss monsters by a pixel or two and then get killed before I could attack a gain. Speaking of pixels, the sprites don't always line up with the pixel grid of the backgrounds:  Enemy death animations (the rotation) also looks a bit goofy and not quite NES-like. And the game is force scaled to such a high resolution it doesn't quite fit in my browser window, so I had some overscan issues, lol! Otherwise, quite good!

Cute bat! The game is quite hard, though. The first level felt a bit slow, but then it rapidly picked up the pace. I felt like my attacks where a bit slow / on screen long, so when you missed, having to wait until they're gone felt a bit frustrating when the fire button would do nothing. When restarting after game over, the game started displaying "Round 0" but I still had the objective of the round where I died in, don't know if that's intentional.

Making this for actual NES can't have been easy! Even though it's simple, I like the idea of a 2D stealth game without fighting. Stealth was a bit too hard, though. I tried using the smoke spell, but once I passed by a villager they still saw me and had me fully identified in less than a second. I ended up waiting for the one plant you only can get in the night, then going on a screen where there are no villagers and just wait for the morning so I could go home to brew the cure.

Props for choosing hard mode and making an actual NES rom!

Not gonna leave a formal rating cause it's more of a prototype, but it's certainly got style. Screen readability might be a bit of an issue to tackle if you develop this further, cause it can be a bit hard to see what's going on.

Oh wow, when did you have time to make all this? This should simply not be a 2-week game jam game. As a fan of early Falcom, it's right up my alley, too. Perfect scores across the board from me. One suggestion: When an NPC dialog is playing and you press a button,  the dialog window closes immediately, but I think it would be better if the first button press shows the full text at once and only if you press the button after the text is finished you close the dialog.

The art and audio in this are ridiculously professional. I'm trying to make a dungeon crawler as a more long-time project myself, so I like to look at other peoples approaches to the genre. Gotta admit I'm not a big fan of dice roll mechanics, though, especially for something crucial as how many steps/healing you get the randomness is too high, imo. The random loot also makes a huge impact on how much of a chance you're gonna have. The battle mechanics were interesting though, holding on to items for buffs or having to deal with negative effects if you can't use them in a turn I think has a lot of potential for cool strategies, if the items are a bit more balanced.

Looked at it again and I think I kind of misremembered/misinterpreted a feeling I got while playing when I was writing the comment. The resolution is 100%, but there's a few situations like this where the enemy runs its course horizontally while partially overlapping the background tiles, which felt a bit off.

I wanted to keep my love but I needed the blood. Sorry, grandma! Cool trade-off mechanic, and glidingfeels really good. The background art seems kind of unfinished but the monster sprites are very good. I wish I could draw such cool ghosts. I also really, really like the visual design of the HUD at the top? One part I'd suggest a bit of polishing for is the hit detection, which felt a bit off sometimes. Also, I don't like to use "up" to jump, so I was glad to discover you made an input menu. I put jumping on x and interact on up, which feels more natural to me. Anyway, good job.

Nice character sprites. The bullet patterns felt a bit monotonous, could shake things up a bit more.

Hello creator of a very similarly-titled game to mine! :) Interesting idea to make you catch the enemies, cause in games like this you usually have to avoid colliding into things. ;) I also liked the sequence in between  where you have to use the buttons to dash. I do agree with the previous comment that the speeds could do with some tweaking, especially the inertia makes it a bit steep to come back from max speed.

Very creative and unique game, highly polished. Sometimes it felt a bit random based on what cards you would and wouldn't have the next day, but otherwise very nice.

Very strong art direction. The graphics feel MSX-y to me. The only two things that kind of take away from the perfect retro feel are the too detailed rocks in the intro and the swipe-over effect in between levels. The controls are tight, the level design is good, and just when things started to feel a bit repetitive it shifts over to a completely new playing style? Unfortunately I ran out of lives before I could figure out how it's supposed to work, and I didn't feel like starting from the beginning again. I'd suggest a "continue" function that resets your score but lets you stay at the current stage (or at least the current "world").

I admit how to catch the curses (it's the ghosts that appear on the road sometimes) isn't that well explained, especially since you have to use the select button (shift on the keyboard) for it cause I ran out of normal buttons for the NES layout. ;) Basically you have to drive under them and then hold select to suck them in while staying close to them. Turned out a bit too complicated... Anyway, thanks for trying out my game and leaving feedback!

Yeah, catching the ghosts is a bit harder than intended, because the car will drift out of curves but the ghosts aren't affected by them at all, so they escape really easily at that point. I've already fixed that and the balancing around refueling for a post-jam update. ;)

(The only thing that changes after catching a ghost is that the next one will be slightly faster, but it's not that noticeable one-to-one.)

I'll finally have decent time to try out more games now since it's the weekend, I'll check out yours soon!

That is certainly a style! Mechanics, art and sound fit together really well. I especially liked the sparks effect coming from her boots in the intro. Being so zoomed in made me feel really claustrophobic, which was a bit uncomfortable for me, though it might match your intended effect. Not quite a game for me but I appreciate the artistry.

Of course the graphics aren't the most sophisticated in the jam and it's a bit of a bummer without music, but it has solid gameplay and the level design is good. Nice touch to make the stages only scroll horizontally OR vertically, like many NES games of this genre. I would suggest polishing the hit detection a bit more, especially the sine wave ghosts and the big guys in the castle can often hit you even though the visible sprites don't overlap. Otherwise pretty good game.

It's a bit simplistic overall (I understand, the time constraints), but I think there's a foundation for something fun. The ship tiles are understated but stylish, and the characters have cute designs. (Like someone else mentioned, I'm also getting more GBC than NES vibes in the choice of colors and style.) The music's not super fancy, but quite fitting to the mood, too. Would have been nice if the book could have been controlled with the same inputs as the rest of the game, instead of relying on mouse controls.

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback! I absolutely need to tune the fuel mechanic a little more. That's a good idea with the signs, maybe I should even add a marker on the progress bar. (I also want to make the tank a little bigger, right now you need to stop at almost every gas station, I think it should be save to miss at least every other one.)

Despite the respawn issues (it seems the game forgot I had gotten the artifact, because the rocks on the way back from the final room stopped shooting at me, but I somehow still got the ending screen when making it back to the start?) , I had a lot of fun figuring out each room. Felt a bit empty at first, but from the second area it picks up the pace. The way each biome has a very different visual mood makes the journey exciting, lots of pretty environment elements. The music's good, but a few of the loops felt a bit too short/repetitive. I would have favored a bit more lenient hit detection with the spikes, sometimes I didn't feel like I was getting hit, but hit I did get. It's a bit hard to get around while swimming. The HUD makes it look like you could get more hearts, but I never found any - are they hidden that well, or was that unimplemented? Only having three hearts felt quite punishing by the final room. Anyway, this is certainly one of the games in this jam I played the longest, good job.

Real, there's never enough time for balancing in a jam...

Cool Castlevania-like music and graphics, especially love the title logo. Jumping through the windows to get to the different levels is a fun effect. The jump feels a bit weird, cause you stop moving horizontally the instant you let go of the directional button, and especially awkward when attacking as the human in the air even while pressing the direction. Most games would implement some form of inertia (like Mario) or have a fixed jump trajectory (Castlevania) for this. I liked the way the werewolf dash was used as a platforming skill, although sometimes it drove me mad that I couldn't attack enemies in certain situations without running off a cliff.

Thanks for the review! You can actually change the key mappings to your liking in the options menu. :)

I dig this game! Nice music and digging around is fun. Also like the implementation of the light and the temporary upgrades for it. Sometimes it feels like bad luck can hurt you a lot, though. I didn't have enough money to upgrade the drill the first two times I encountered the shop, and after that getting through rocks took quite a long time.