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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.

A great one indeed!

Thanks, I just added my project to the jam!

Just wondering, can our image use an IP we don’t own the rights to, or does it need to be original?

That’s a great idea to make the NPCs part of the background. It would take a bit of work to get the dialogue to work, but it’s certainly doable. 

Happy to help!

So for the splash screens all I do is take an image, then convert it down to only a few colors, sometimes 4, other times more, depends on how it looks.  If its more than 4, I then need to choose which colors get changed to which, and sometimes I may divide them in half, so a color might be light green on a head but dark green on a body, or whatever.  And then I need to make adjustments here are there to make it look better, working on a pixel at a time.  It can take some time, but I enjoy it.

As for the backgrounds, I tend to take inspiration from places and run with it.  For example, the Moscow background is literally the splash screen from Tetris on Game Boy, then I just expanded it a bit keeping the same style and throwing in a few more of Stalin's palaces.  Havana came from a picture of Havana, I saw the same patterns on every building, just in different heights and colors, so I simply recreated that pattern and then adjusted colors and heights of the buildings.  As for Honduras, I worked with actual pictures of palm trees and Mayan pyramids.

With splash screens and backgrounds you also have the issue of tile limits, and I used the DMG limits, not GBC as I intended for it to be GB game.  So you gotta be smart and cut and paste tiles where it won't be noticeable to get it within the limits.  Ultimately I had to make it a GBC game because it just ran too slowly on the DMG that it wasn't fun.

The sprites, also pictures, cartoon pictures, or even sprite pictures that I then ran thru the same processes.  Since they are on a small scale and only have three colors you really gotta put some effort into it to make them look good, but since they're small it doesn't take all that long.

I actually studies architecture so took a lot of classes on using phot editting and 3D modeling tools in grad school, and all of that translates really well into making Game Boy art.  Well maybe not the 3D modeling.

Hope this helps!

I wish knew how to convert guitar tabs, I'm not a musician so I really only know how to use piano sheet music.

I don't know if its possible to play in a browser on a desktop/laptop.  However, on a phone it will give you a Game Boy control pad to play with, or you can use the roms.  Anyways, I'm glad you at least liked the portion you could play.

Alleyway is probably my favorite Game Boy game, so this game is perfect for me.  Very interesting physics for the ball, I actually like its randomness as it prevents you from getting into an endless loop at the end of a level.  The power downs are interesting, I kind of wish there was some sort of description so you knew what exactly they would do to you.

It looks cool, and I like the simplicity, but aside from collecting the eyeballs I couldn't really figure out what I was supposed to do.

I love the idea of being part of a local jam, but I only make Game Boy games. Would they be welcome?

So the first Game Boy Hero I had originally named Conquest and it was going to be a Zelda-like game about the White Stripes. In fact, that’s sort of the origins of the music festival, but I didn’t really know what I was doing and had trouble finding free sheet music for anything other than Seven Nation Army. But maybe I’ll buy a White Stripes piano book and make the game someday. 

I love the idea of it, this is the sort of game that I always tend to play on Game Boy (I love Alleyway).  But I'm not sure I understand the objective or how you achieve it.  And when nothing is in sight I'm just randomly choosing a direction or trying to guess where I think I may have saw something.

Thanks so much, glad you like it!

This was really well done.  My only complaint is how easy it is to get a 7, it should probably spin faster, take time to slow down, and have multiple options to make it feel more like a slot machine.  I couldn't quite figure out if there is any skill to the coin flip, but it seems like I got heads probably 80% of the time.  Its a great idea and fantastic graphics.  Not sure that a Game Boy could handle this, would definitely need to have fewer NPCs, but it would be great to see it developed into an actual Game Boy game.

Thats great to hear, I had a lot of fun making it.

This is a great game, but it wouild help if up and down cycled through the colors, it took me a while to get a hang of that, but eventually got 36 points.  I think that the basket should probably move a bit faster as well as you don't have time to cross the whole screen which occasionally happens, or alternatively, don't let the next ball be drop more than half a screen away.  But fun game, would be great if you could create a .gb rom for it as I'd love to play it on my Pocket.

Thanks so much,  those animations is where the bulk of my time got spent.  I actually wanted to take them a bit further, but just didn't have the time.

So glad to hear it, and it sounds like you need to acquaint yourself with the music of Warren Zevon.

I got really good at making music from my Game Boy Hero games, and I still have probably 30 songs I want to add to Game Boy Hero II.  And I think the endless runner concept worked amazingly well given it is a Game Boy game.  Sadly its a bit too much for the DMG to handle so I had to make it a GBC game, but it was all designed to be played on the DMG.  But the animations is where I spent the bulk of my development time, it became a lot of fun to experiment with how far I could push the Game Boy, and where its limits truly are.  I can tell you that the rom plays flawlessly on my Analogue Pocket.

The cool thing is, I think taking what I learned about large scale animation from this game, and creating a simplified Game Boy version of an endless runner, I think I can probably make a very legitimate Temple Run port for the GBC, and I plan on doing so in the not too distant future.

Yep, wackiness was definitely what I was going for with this one, I decided to make it just one big Warren Zevon-related joke.  The music I actually got a down to a science in the first two games I made which are the Game Boy Hero games.  I had found the sheet music for these Warren Zevon songs while making those, but they were incomplete songs and had the wrong bpm for those games.  But I realized that they would be perfect for a game about being unlucky so quickly transcribed them in the tracker and did my best to add drums.

Thanks so much, this really became an experiment in what sort of animations I could pull off in a Game Boy game.  The amazing thing is that they would all work perfectly fine on a DMG.  It was the actual gameplay that had lag and is the reason why I made it a GBC game.

There actually is a way to kinda skip them.  Once the text finishes being typed, you can press any button and move onto the next screen.  But the game is very simple and the cutscenes are where I spent 95% of my development time, so I didn't really want them to be skipped over.

Thanks, thats pretty much where I spent all of my time!

Thanks so much, GB Studio makes that part very easy!

Thanks so much.  I spent a lot of time on that stuff and making sure that everything would look good.