Thanks! I’m so glad you like it, and you can expect to find a lot more mini-games with unique dynamics in the not so distant future. 

So glad you liked it. I really wanted to show off the versatility of using a single button and wish I had more time to make more levels as I still have plenty of ideas for single button mini-games. 

The Ode to Joy level was a lot of fun making and I still need to work on it a lot to get it truly up to my standards. I’ve made rhythm games before for Game Boy (Game Boy Hero 1 and 2) but the one button requirement meant I needed a completely different engine for this game. 

Thanks for sharing how to play it on a Mac as I don’t have access to one. 

I made the mistake of playing this on my phone and had no clue what was going on. Then I started noticing the details and the game started making sense. Definitely needs to be played on a larger screen, but once I figured out what I was doing it was pretty fun. 

Unfortunately this isn’t one button because you also have a directional input. You could solve this by holding the button and having that activate an arrow that circles around the box, then release when the arrow is facing the direction you want to go. 

I also think the game would benefit from ramping up the difficulty after the initial round teaches you the mechanics. It would also be great if the patterns were actually pixel art. 

You need some sort of cue as to how many attacks there will be. The first enemy is just one. The second alternates between 1 & 3 but I simply had to figure that out after losing a few times. The third enemy I gave up on as I didn’t want to spend time learning the pattern. 

Also, I couldn’t quite figure out how holding the button at the end works. 

My plan is for testing purposes only is to add a ruler to the background so I can measure exact pixels. Then change the visual feedback icon so it updates when the button can be pressed instead of when it is pressed. I can then take a video of me playing the game like this, still pressing A (doing so adds about 10 pixels of lag from start to finish). Then I can go thru that video and see where exactly I need to place the notes.

I also plan to have the camera only move 4 bars at a time (currently it just runs to the end of the song). Every 4th bar ends in a half note, so I’ll have time to then have the camera jump to a new position and start moving again so that the next 4 bars have better accuracy in case you messed up on the previous 4 bars. This should help a lot with the third section where you have the sets of eighth notes as they create a ton of lag. 

Of course I should note that all of this will only work properly on either an actual Game Boy or an FPGA device like the Analogue Pocket. Emulators simply can’t match the lag of original hardware, and everyone of them is different. 

Thanks for the feedback. The last thing I did was add the countdowns on the first two levels so that you aren’t just launching out the gate, and I need to add this to the other levels still. But I agree that there is a learning curve to the game. But once you know what to expect, replays do become easier. Ode to Joy is also a work in progress as I need to account for lag on a Game Boy. I actually just came up with a plan for tackling this problem last night right before I went to sleep. 

I really don’t get how this game works. It seems like it’s all just based on waiting for your ship to get to Northern Africa to start, and then just spamming the button. I twice got 100%, but didn’t win. I think the issue was I didn’t reach Hawaii, but I feel like that isn’t even possible because once I conquered Alaska all the airplanes disappear in the Americas. 

Very calm and relaxing game, right down to the music. I do kind of wish that there was some sort of timer so that there is more to the game than just completing it. Doesn’t need to be something that kills you when you run out of time, but more just a way of measuring your best times. 

It takes a while to get a hang of it, especially since when double clicking you move in the direction of the arrow on the second click instead of the first. I really liked your music and sound effects, seemed pretty appropriate. 

This is a pretty difficult game, especially with those narrow ramps you have to climb and that sheep constantly ramming you. I feel like opening up the level so you have more room to move around would be very beneficial. But cute game nonetheless, especially with the baaing. 

It’s a fun little game, but as others have said, it breaks the rules for the jam. I’m not saying that you should redesign it to comply, but if you wanted to do so it wouldn’t be hard, just choose a single direction and angle to travel in as a missile and problem solved. Although you would need to rework the level design to make it work with those dynamics. 

I think you’ve done a wonderful job recreating Asteroids but putting your own unique spin (pun intended) on it. I think I actually prefer this over Asteroids as the controls are just simpler, and I’m also not losing a quarter playing it!

That makes sense, I also need to use Z when testing in the GB Studio emulator. I’ll add that to the jam description. Thanks!

Thanks, I’m glad you liked it. Another Girl does take a while, but it is an appropriate amount of time for finding all 10 girls. Also, once you find the 10th, the level ends automatically. 

Yeah, I’m never able to get GB Studio games to play on a computer browser. However, if you play it on your phone it will actually give you a Game Boy controller beneath the screen so that it looks and almost feels like an actual Game Boy. 

To play on a computer you would have to download the .gb rom and play in an emulator. 

For those of you who want to see the music videos, or if there is a particular level you want to play again, simply enter BEAT in morse code on the title screen.

_... . ._ _

So I’ve already started working on my game, but rather than base it on one song (well it kind of is), I’m basing it on an entire album. I hope that’s alright. 

So I just started working on a game for another totally unrelated jam and by pure coincidence just decided to make it so it only uses one button. So obviously I want to join here but I’d also like to finish the game after this jam and submit it to the other jam. Just making sure that is alright. 

And it’s a rather ambitious game I’m working on so no way I can finish before the end of this jam. The other jam is allowing me two months. 

This was a ton of fun and got me to go out and do something that I wouldn’t normally do with my camera. Looking forward to doing it again next year! Thanks for organizing it!

Thanks so much. Of course I was very selective in the pictures I shared, the details weren’t nearly as clear in many of them. 

Of course I'll post the original picture from the Game Boy Camera (although I still need to learn how to do that), but can I also post a scan of the picture printed with the Game Boy Printer just for fun?

Thanks for sharing it, I really appreciate it. I’d love to add ratings, but how do you do that?

Just wanted to let you know that I just updated the game and greatly improved the visual feedback on hits.

Don’t worry, I am. Currently working on a major upgrade for Game Boy Hero II. Besides more than doubling the number of songs, there’ll be an actual tour mode where you play different cities, make money, buy clothes and guitars, and need certain scores to advance. 

After that I have several other ideas that should all be a lot of fun. So I’ll be busy for quite a while. 

No discord, never used it.  But I recommend checking out my sequel Game Boy Hero II which does a much better job as it actually uses rhythm, unlike this game which just randomly drops notes.  This was what I created the first time I ever opened GB Studio, so I still had a lot to learn, and I still can learn a lot more.

As for how to do it, there are two ways.  I think the more common approach is to shoot projectiles and "catch" them by moving the player to the location of the button you press.  My method is different, I move actors down the screen and if you press a button when the actor is in a certain position it records a hit, if they're elsewhere its a miss, or if they reach the bottom of the screen its a miss.  As for when to start moving the actors, this can be done by calling routines (6xx) in the uge file for the music.  There are 4 available routines, so it works great if you only use 4 buttons, although you could certainly create more complex code that can do more than 4, but then you have to worry about lag.  Getting this to play on the DMG is a real balancing act of how much you can do before the lag slows down the game.  You really can't have any lag as it ruins the rhythm, so you got to make compromises.  Beyond that, its all just figuring out how the timing works which involved me creating spreadsheets and doing a ton of math.

By the way, I'm hoping in a month or two to have a big update for Game Boy Hero II with more than double the number of songs and an actual tour mode where you can develop a character just like in Guitar Hero and Rock Band games.

Since all the cutscenes progress without hitting buttons I didn’t want to require a button on the high scores (I originally did and didn’t like it). But I just uploaded new files last night, so now if you wait 15 seconds on the title screen it’ll change to the high scores. 

I just realized that I forgot to actually set it up to save high scores!  Well luckily thats an easy one and I'll upload a fixed rom after the jam.  I don't think that they will save if you play via a browser, but they at least will save on a Game Boy or Pocket.  I only give you 10 seconds to view the high scores and then switch over to the credits, or if you hit any button it will switch then.  I don't really want to require you to push something as I'd rather move you along to the start of the game.  But perhaps I should make it so if you are on the intro scene for more than 15 seconds it takes you to the high scores, kind of like how it would on an arcade cabinet.  In fact, I may start adding that feature to all of my games.  Would also mean that if I decide to add the Konami code to this game, you'd have to enter it somewhat quickly which would be alright.  Just need to think up what it will do, I suppose it could just stop the clock at 0 and not kill you so you are guaranteed to finish.

I'm actually a little surprised that the platformer portion gave you the most trouble.  I admit there are a couple tricky jumps, but they are all quite doable once you figure out where the edge is.  The key is that you can't be running in slo-mo after getting possessed by a ghost, then even the smallest jumps become impossible, got to wait until those effects wear off.  And those invisible holes at the end aren't entirely invisible, there actually is a visual cue, but theres no way you'll figure it out before you fall thru the first one.  I added that as sort of one last unexpected challenge, and really like how it happens above the broken platforms so that you risk falling multiple levels at the end.  But at least I was nice and didn't put any ghosts up there!

So glad you liked it. De Stijl wasn’t actually my original plan. I had originally wanted to do something with Lego like the Fell in Love With a Girl video, but the problem becomes I really can’t do diagonals, and how do I express that blocks are actually Lego with only 4 colors. Plus it would take way to long to design the animation and program it, and I didn’t quite know how you could interact with it. So De Stijl was sort of a compromise, but I’m thrilled with how it came out, plus it was simple to pull off with only black, white, and red. I kind of feel like the pink elsewhere in the game was sort of cheating, but did make the game look better. 

I figured a bunch of your time went into that controller which I must admit is pretty cool and way beyond my abilities to make. I wonder if it would be possible to use haptic feedback on the individual buttons to tell you which one to press to make a song and make it more game like. It would be a very unique game if you could pull off such a thing. 

Thanks! I have a lot of fun making those cutscenes. Hopefully the maze of the first level wasn’t too difficult, but it’s kinda hard to know when you design it and know exactly where to go! 

I couldn't quite figure out if it was better to actually type or to just pound on the keyboard.  The spelling mistakes certainly make the former a bit difficult, while the later seemed to be a little less responsive than it should, probably couldn't handle me hitting 10 keys at once.

But I think that a game like this would have a lot of potential as an educational game teaching kids how to type, of course you'd want to fix the spelling mistakes and not allow typing out of order.  But determining how many followers you got based on speed would be a good incentive for kids.  Then obviously have rewards for when you reach certain milestones to keep them interested.

Cool idea, finished it in just over 5 minutes.  I do feel like you need to offer more visual cues as the game is really just trial and error, especially knowing which walls you can walk thru.  I'd suggest make it more of a maze where there are plenty of options for paths but only one correct one so that it remains a challenge.  But I like how there are no enemies to worry about and you can just relax as you play the game.

Cool idea to have a music maker.  Kind of wish you took it a step further and maybe turned it into some sort of inverse rhythm game.  

The visuals are absolutely incredible, even the simple cartoon cutscenes at the start look awesome.  The music and sound effects are perfect for this as well.  I've never really played a game like this (my kids play these types of games on Blooket, but they require zero skill) so it took me a bit to get a hang of it, but once I did it was fun.  Well done.

It took me a bit to figure out the controls, I'm not sure I like up and down being forward and reverse.  I play games mainly on consoles so am more used to arrows being for steering and then A and B being gas and brakes.  Kind of strange only using one hand to play.  But the driving is really smooth.  I'd prefer HUD however instead of the green bar over the car, the green kind of ruins the visuals, whereas as a HUD could be designed with dark colors to fit the theme.

I’m really glad you liked it. 

That first level was a tricky one. It’s a maze, so the issue becomes how do you keep it fresh on multiple play thrus, especially since randomly generated levels are out of the question on a Game Boy. My solution was to have it disorient you when you run into a moving barrier. The alternative would have been to make multiple mazes and have you cycle through them, but that’s very time consuming, and you’d eventually have to repeat them. So I think my solution worked rather well while also providing a bit of a challenge. 

Level 2 I actually based on my least favorite game from my childhood, Ghostbusters for the NES. That game is horrible, but for some reason also very addictive. But if I tried to copy Mario 3, it would never be as good and would be a disappointment. So I copied an awful game knowing that I could only do a better job! But I tried to make it as unlike Ghostbusters as possible, while still keeping the inspiration. So it isn’t too long, and the ghosts can’t kill you. They simply slow you down and take away points at the end. But unlike Ghostbusters which I’ve never beat, and never care to beat, I wanted a game that you could easily beat every time. The fun is in its silliness and trying to get a better high score. 

Sweet cover!  And so glad you like my games, I'm having a ton of fun making them.  I hope to release my next game in maybe a few days, just gotta make some cutscenes.  And after that I have a few more ideas as well.

Thanks so much. It was literally the first thing that popped into my head when I read the word balance. 

Believe it or not, this game was a pretty much a first for me.  While it is really the fourth game I made (Game boy Hero I & II were rhythm games, and I'm pretty much done with a board game that I haven't published yet), this was my first platformer, my first time working with large scale animation, my first time creating actual backgrounds (and designing them for parallax scrolling), and my first time making sprites that weren't just 16x16 people.

As for the art, the mixed styles wasn't really intentional, it just sort of happened.  I actually was a little concerned about the inconsistency of it all, but it all did a great job of telling the story and came out great so I just ran with it.  I never really thought about it, but yes, it does lend itself to a bootleg kind of feel which I think is pretty appropriate for a game whose whole concept was pretty much a joke to me.  But while I made it as a sort of joke, at the same time I do feel that it is a fitting tribute to Warren Zevon and that he'd probably have a good laugh at it if he were still alive today.

Anyways, I'm really glad you like it.  I'm currently working on another game for a different jam that will follow in similar footsteps.