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Correct! The full credits are listed at the bottom of the description.

Beautiful artwork as always.
Interesting twist for this game, both the themes and the gameplay, I'm excited to see this expanded!

Particularly I wanted to note about when the grandpa says something along the lines of "It's been so many years since I've started, I only have these three now" - I thought that was a fantastic way to juxtapose this game to Pokémon. Normally you'd expect someone who's experienced to have quite the haul of 'mons, so the "only three left" really showcases well the darker themes and elements here.

Yes! It is a bonafide GBC ROM and should run the exact same as any other GB/C ROM on the console.

Much appreciated! Thank you for playing.

Thank you so much for your engagement with the game! It is NOT an easy game, especially when going for all of the bananas so I'm happy to hear that you were invested in it.

The glitches that occur are, as far as I know, related to the GBS 2 Beta 5 engine as opposed to a logic issue in the scripts. Many OnUpdate scripts are used simultaneously for enemies, camera, and other things. I believe that in running so many, some events are either skipped or even overloaded in the RAM. So while the logic is good, the design does not make the proper accommodations for this, though there was certainly attempts! Level 3 is actually a good bit different because the original layout triggered these glitches far more easily. However, it was still not enough to be totally glitch-free.

That being said, I had a blast getting all that I could out of the engine (even if I pushed a little too hard) and who knows? Now that GBS 3 is out and has all of its great features, it could be a good time to build out a game closer to the original plans.

Thank you again for playing and for your thoughtful post! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed :D

I appreciate the interest, that game was a lot of fun to make. Limitations were higher in GBS 2b5 but now with GBS 3.1, so much more is possible! (Still need to do that palette change though haha)

It's nostalgic to see that old-style YT playbar :,)
This is a cool choice for subject since that era of the UI lends itself so well to recreating in GB (as opposed to the current day YT) with its 4:3 ratio and big visual elements that it itself needed due to SD monitors of the time.

I like seeing personal discoveries with this jam theme. And it being the mid 2000's adds more flavor to it. I've always thought it was interesting the idea of playing a console past it heyday by a few years and, while this may not have been intended, displaying a 2000's subject matter on a console from (mostly) the 90's feels very much in the spirit of discovery to me. I can imagine it being the mid 2000's, browsing YT and playing GB, perhaps still finding out about new games from online or getting the most out of the games one has had for years.

Nice entry :) And congratulations on your very first jam submission!!

Very nice, I enjoyed reading the poem alongside it. Though I feel that you did a good job capturing the essence that the art stands on its own!

It's very cozy, and I think the view-port border helps with that. I wonder, was that originally part of the composition or born out of matching the tile limit?

The pose and light of the raccoon and leaf make it feel like a proper Zelda setup when the player finds a new item, which is super neat to have that GB DNA in the composition. Though, the diagonal line of elements from the top left to the bottom right gives it more of a feeling of a traditional painting. That's a cool balance!

Thank you!

Originally, I actually wanted it to be a totally linear succession of unique tiles starting at the top left and then having the remaining 168 tiles be just a blank bottom half. That would've really hit home the "192" idea. However, since the point of the piece was to push to the limit with what new techniques I could discover, I took that opportunity to make the two large sections of plain/dithered tiles to explore how they would look blending into one another.

The limitations of GB/C can be a lot of fun to max out though. The gorilla face on the left is from my game DE '22 and you might have noticed that some of his face is dark green instead of light green. This is because I needed a different color palette to help show the buildings in the background too. So in the final game, his face is all one solid color. That was a technique a lot of GBC devs will come across and I first discovered it for myself on that game hence its inclusion here.


Working within 192 is certainly tough! It can be frustrating and take some patience and testing, but I think it's very rewarding to have the final product.

Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you like it!

The 192 is admittedly one of my favorite tiles :)  At one point I went over the limit and had to decide what to cut out but I was def keeping that one haha

I meant the shadows you illustrated on the subject, but the filter is indeed rad as well!

Thanks! I've never heard of YY-CHR, going to look that up.

Tilesets have a mysterious aesthetic to them I feel - like seeing the garbled mess that you know is played out so cohesively in game 

Neat perspective and use of line art.

I too would like to discover this awesome bliss '~'

:0 Rad lighting!

Cool use of repetition and unique elements!
Isometric is always a treat to see on GB and this is a really smooth way to get some milage out of repeating tiles while maintaining detail. And I see you got two tiles to spare!
Always a joy to see your illustrations :D

Thanks howdy! Much appreciated to hear from a fellow GB dev ^u^

Thanks for making an awesome front (and back) cover!

Damn, that bass digs DEEP!

I downloaded the ROM two days ago, looks like I might've  missed that update!

Glad to hear about a full release! If you need help with testing in the future, feel free to reach out to me :D

So much fun :D

I had a blast playing through this, the pre-battle dialogue really brought a lot of character and the art was real eye candy. There were one or two questions that I didn't know but I was quite surprised that I had this knowledge of some games that I've never even played haha

The only two things about this that I wish were different are:
1) The time to answer questions felt very short. Despite knowing the answer, there were some that I got incorrect simply because I didn't have time to read all of the options clearly (example, I didn't see that "Famicom" was an option for earliest release and chose "NES" instead).
2) The length! I would love to see a longer version if y'all keeping working on it.

Nice job y'all!

PS - Regarding the wolf's question, I do have a copy of Nintendo Power Issue #285 thank you very much! B)

Just played it through in one big play session this morning. I really enjoyed the art and was surprised at just how much dialogue there was and it never felt boring. I mostly focused on talking to Raven but would often talk to the others along the way just to hear more.

For a good while in the beginning I was grinding in the magma area since I couldn't find anything to do in the forrest. After dying a lot and feeling like there must be something I'm missing, I talked to the parrot and learned about the order of the 4 areas and the bosses. The forrest temple had me confused because I went there multiple times and didn't realize that the tiles on either side of the statue were an entrance.

After getting the upgrade I felt like I had a chance at going through the whole game. I played the patched ROM so I don't know if things were different before, but I felt like grinding didn't bring me much benefit. The only thing that really made a difference was getting the power ups.

The only thing I found majorly frustrating was how enemies can still deal damage even as they are blowing up (and still moving around) post death. This even happened to me on the final boss where I won, got the victory text box, then died from the boss's explosion moving into me.

The amount of content for such a short dev time is crazy, it's clear you put a lot of work into this so kudos! I had quite a fun time playing :)

Going into this, I heard from a lot of people that this was their favorite submission of Game Showdown 2023 so I was looking forward to checking it out! Even after hearing all of the excitement, this still managed to surprise me throughout the whole game.
For a 7 day jam, the amount of well designed content packed in here is really fantastic. Really great job!

Super fun!
I really got a kick out of the dialogue; it's brief but so funny.

I noticed that when I played, the "friend / hunger / rage" notes did not have the placeholder icons like it does in the picture on this itch page. For example, I never saw any yellow goose icons - it was an empty row until I got a red goose head.

I also happened across the debug menu. not sure if that was intentionally left in as an easter egg or not but it added to the chaos which is a plus in my book hahah

I got stuck after giving my number, no other item after worked. Is there something I'm missing?

Really enjoying it so far!

EDIT: Got it! The item I was supposed to use didn't work earlier in the interaction so I thought it was null for the whole thing.

Hopefully this helps without giving away too much:
If it's already nighttime in the side yard, it's impossible to get the 10th rat.

Really dig the look into the process here.

I think that the decision to bring in color is definitely the right choice here! I can relate to basing creative decisions on a core element or theme and am trying to get better at seeing where I can stray from the strict boundaries while still embodying the element/theme (in this case, the small accents of muted color working well).

Did it take some trail and error for placement of the cat and boy? Imo, the layout works very well to the tone of the game. Having Midnight be higher up than Leif and looking at the viewer gives the impression to me that the cat is quite literally on top of things while Leif is (pun intended) spacing out. I also like that the fonts follow with their respective characters.

Thank you; looking to get back into dev-work soon!

Cool to see the process!

The first few backgrounds remind me of the early days of the Pokemon TCG with sets like Jungle and the Base Set featuring the Sugimori artwork on top of a somewhat-edited stock photo.
I think you made a good choice though with the ground textures and can relate to the memories of excavation :) To me, the scenes of nature are good for showcasing the lifestyle of a creature while the ground textures represent more of an unknown excitement to the viewer. It's like an invitation to dig deeper and discover all you can.

Looking forward to the next devlog!

I used the EZ FLASH Jr.
https://www.ezflash.cn/product/ezflash-junior/

You can load a ton of roms onto a micro SD card and then access them all on your GameBoy or GameBoy Color! In my opinion, this is the best option for testing your own games as well as playing games from other devs in the community.

Here is a GB Studio Central article that goes more in-depth on some options:
https://gbstudiocentral.com/tips/getting-your-gb-studio-games-on-real-hardware/

Finished playing through it last night. The atmosphere from the artwork is really enjoyable, you did a fantastic job!

With pixel art in modern day games, I've seen a lot of people make art that is really neat for GBC, but not necessarily practical for actually playing. I played this on an original, non-modded GBC and it was a great experience! Everything looked nice while still being very readable.

PS - the style to me feels like if Capcom never moved on to the GBA and instead made Minish Cap on the GBC 

Thank you for playing!
It's great to see a recording of someone's first experience with it to.

Cool! Thanks again for hosting the jam :D

Thank you!

Yeah, if I continue work on this game I definitely plan to make it more accessible both in difficulty and actually implementing a proper tutorial.

The game is inspired by Donkey Kong (with the first level layout acting as an homage) amongst other gorilla-based media (for example, King Kong, one of the inspirations of Donkey Kong). Ultimately though, its inspirations are from a variety of long-term interests of mine (such as construction gear)! And believe it or not, the name "DE" is NOT actually derived from "DK" but rather a different past project of mine.

Slower tank-like controls were something I thought were fun when done right so I tried my hand at building a game with it. The use of a gorilla as the player sprite is in hopes that the player inherently has an understanding of the character's weight and heft.

In the arcade Donkey Kong, DK is at the top and is very menacing. I didn't have the ability to make a big bad guy stationed at the top of the screen (though I wanted to have one to indicate where the enemies are coming from) so I opted for the construction crane since it required stationary imagery as opposed to a large animated sprite.

The slow controls and sprite limitations (including hit-box limitations) made perfect sense to have a gorilla be the playable character navigating a construction zone run by the tiny fellow. So it was from these (and a few other) design decisions that the "reverse Donkey Kong" feel formed!

Thank you :)

I had a lot of fun playing it!

My first play-through, I was just at the end and ran out of time... Managed to finish with 3:40 the next time!

The amount of mechanics you fit in here is very impressive. And the progression design that tied it all together was good as well! It reminded of a Link to the Past temple!

The hardest part for me (but also my favorite) was the part with the pit and where you raise the bubbles. I accidentally eliminated one of the enemies but it still took me a while to figure out what was happening without explanation or a short demonstration that shows what's going on. Perhaps a shadow below the ball could help show that it's higher up when lifted by a platform? 
This part of the game was the hardest/most dramatic, so I feel like it could be a good fit for the "boss" of the experience.

I can see why this took longer than the 7 days for the GameBoy Showdown jam! You really packed a lot in here which was an awesome surprise while playing.
I think you could easily build out a larger scale game using all of these mechanics if you were interested in doing so!

Thank you!

I do plan to continue development and implement tutorials as well as other tweaks to make it more accessible.

Great idea! That would be a good break to change the tone of the instrument as well and perhaps apply a more complex and capable control setup like the one that juzek mentioned in the comments here.

That's nice to hear that it reminded you of the educational games - your game reminded me of my time I got to spend learning the basics of an old apple IIe when I was young (not a GUI system like the one in your game but still a similar experience).

Were you able to figure out either or both of the melodies in this game (or maybe get them by chance)? I do plan to do a longer version of this game with day and night as well as multiple seasons with different tunes, but after the feedback I've received here I am considering making it a longer and more drawn out experience. That will give ample time to ease the player in as well as get good use out of the mechanics.

Thank you for your engagement with the game and the feedback; much appreciated :)

>:)

After playing through it again, I see what you mean about the clouds as platforms. Maybe it's because I played on a non-backlit GBC that I didn't notice them the first time.