itch.io

Thank you! I'm glad you like it.

Yep, that's it. It's a little bit useful in Minima but essential in Anteform. Anteform is a bit of a detective story, so a big part of the experience is searching things like desks and cabinets to get clues as to what happened and what's going on.

Some things do respond to narrative progress, but I was pretty tightly constrained by available resources. I won't get into to what does / doesn't because of spoilers.

Once you figure it all out it'll be obvious what needs to be done to beat it. Based on past players' experiences it's possible to figure out what happened to the missing Steve (and others) and prevent still more people from suffering the same fate.

Yes, in Minima there is one weapon available that's better than anything you can get in the store. You'll have to talk with folks to get info on it and where to find it.

There's a switch that you passed earlier that you need to find. I believe there's also a clue about this that someone has someplace, but I confess it's been awhile so I don't recall where.

Oops, Sorry about that. I'd better try and get that fixed... Somehow you're the first one who's ever run into that (or at least reported it to me).

Yeah, this is true to the spirit of these games in the past. There are also severe technical issues preventing the addition of such things. Minima and Anteform both use pretty much all the resources available to them in the PICO-8 environment. Generally I can't even change existing strings too much let alone add navigation. By design though they're actually pretty easy to map on graph paper as they're all deliberately very regular. Basically it's a matter of coloring in blocks versus leaving them blank, and floor sizes match.

With both games there's really only one dungeon or tower that's absolutely required, and when you finish that one you'll know it. The other ones can be pretty good ways to build up experience and gain gold, though.

Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I tried to get everything into the interactive help menu available via the "enter" (or "return" depending on your keyboard) key. It's "f". The command that historically always gets people is giving the "x" as a "direction" with "look" to search the current location.

Of course there are the other Ultima games. All of the ones up through at least #6 have a lot of the same feel as Minima, and the newer ones are (obviously) more modern. Spiderweb Software is a company that's still commercially making (much larger) games with a similar feel but with more modern interfaces; I'd recommend Queen's Wish (which has a demo available) if you want to try out one.

All my games are free, but I'd be honored to add my most popular one to the list if you think it'd help: https://feneric.itch.io/minima

Good to hear, thanks for letting me know!

Thanks, I'm glad you like them. I've really enjoyed hearing back from people who've played them and had fun with them.

Your detective agency has been hired to investigate the disappearance of one Steve Johanson, and so you've been dropped into remote Anteform Valley to solve the mystery. Even before getting there though there's a second disappearance and it quickly becomes apparent that there's more going on than a simple missing persons case. What's up with the local wildlife? Who's the weirdo that's been seen lurking in the woods? How are the monks involved?

It's up to you to solve the mystery and save the good people of Anteform Valley. Are you up to the challenge? Download Anteform, peruse the included case briefing prepared for you, and go find out. Talk with the locals, perform some casual breaking & entering, search for clues, and battle some rabid wildlife as you try to figure out what's happening in time to prevent something worse from occurring.

Anteform is in the weird detective genre, that is, a mystery story with sci-fi and/or horror elements. You'll see what that means as you progress through the game. It was written using the Minima Engine for PICO-8, so its play style and UI are similar to the 8-bit Ultima games, and like those games it features a world view, enterable towns, and 3D first-person dungeons. It requires a keyboard for input and includes built-in help.

The evil Faxon has been building his forces of orcs, undead, and other monstrosities and is threatening to overwhelm all of Miskatonia from the safety of his secret base. The world needs a hero. Could it be you?

Minima is a game that is meant to invoke the feeling of playing one of the Ultima games on the C64 or C128 back in the day. While it is meant to have the same spirit, it has its own setting, plot, and characters. Like those games it features a 2D world view with enterable towns, castles, dungeons, and towers and uses a 3D view for dungeons and towers. If you like those games or are just a fan of retro RPGs or hand-drawn pixel art, you may like Minima. It's not a very long game; folks who've won it say it took between two to four hours to do so. It was written in the PICO-8 environment and is a free download for MS-Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Download Minima from Itch.io

Just like the original Ultimas, it comes with a manual written mostly from an in-world perspective. It's provided in a few e-book formats and gives a quick introduction to the game and the setting in addition to describing how to play. It even provides a few tips and hints, so it's recommended to at least skim through it even when one relies fully on the in-game help system to figure out keyboard commands.

P.S. :  I'm a little late in announcing this. It's my first Itch.io game and I'm still finding my way around.

I've poked around and haven't seen anything about Itch.io gift certificates. It'd be great to be able to purchase a gift certificate / gift card / electronic credits / whatever that could be handed out as a present and used on any titles available on Itch.io.

Hello to everyone. I'm Feneric (or Eric, whichever) and have been making games for fun since I was a kid. Most aren't available anywhere, but Minima is here and a random old interactive fiction sample or two is likewise still available. I tinker with lots of different technologies and game design tools and target areas ranging from retro 8-bit pixel art sorts of pieces to classical interactive fiction to immersive VR games.

OK, so long as you can read it. I was figuring if you couldn't I could probably just post it in its entirety in the comments here as it is only 198 words.

Per their post that's exactly what that change should have addressed, but I guess something else is going wrong someplace. Are you seeing it okay in the browser? If not I can figure out a way to get you a copy with different line endings.

Thanks, I'm glad you like the concept. I figured that if the sun actually did vanish, somewhere there really would be a committee meeting of interdisciplinary alphas trying to resolve the issue, and the comedy of the situation just came naturally.

Different systems use different line endings, and up until recently Microsoft Notepad didn't always handle them properly. Which version are you using? Theoretically it got fixed a few months ago: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/05/08/extended-eol-in-notepad/ Prior versions of Notepad would put everything on the same line if the text file came from a different system. If you open it directly in your browser it should be okay, but please let me know if it isn't; there ought to be some way to get you a copy with identical text but line endings adjusted for your machine.

Thank you. I'm glad you like it.

I made an engine on top of PICO-8. With fairly minor changes it ought to be usable for other games. I put a few notes about how to start doing so on the GitHub page at https://github.com/Feneric/Minima

Note though that the limits in PICO-8 are pretty fierce and the production version of the code had to be made a little ugly in order to fit within them. It's probably easier learning the structure from an early version before looking at the production one.

Yes, you can play it online at: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=31831

Please note that while it works in mobile browsers, it requires a keyboard.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I did actually think about that but ended up not going that way for a couple of reasons. The first is that the games Minima strives to be like all use the "a" key for "attack", too, and anyone who's used to those will probably have the whole "a -> direction" sequence pretty well entrenched in muscle memory already. The second is that there are a couple of areas in the game where it makes a difference. One of these I won't go into because I don't want to give anything away that players can figure out by playing themselves, but the second is that whether or not bumping is forgiven makes a big difference in towns.