itch.io

Well, as a learning exercise, I wrote that SNES gamepad patch.

You can turn on a SNES gamepad in Mesen or attach a real SNES gamepad to the NES via an adapter.

I don’t know if the full game is playable this way, but I was able to do the first few minutes of it with the SNES gamepad.

https://jordigh.com/Crater%20Song%20-%20SNES%20gamepad.ips

But it doesn’t give a full picture of what the game (and Zalia) is capable of. Now it does, even if just for a few minutes.

Ah, yes A Taste Of Power. It’s a good idea. :)

Some minor feedback after playing an earlier demo from about a week ago (btw, are you updating the version numbers in the downloaded files?). I only played about 35 minutes.

1. The gameplay is absolutely fantastic. It feels exactly like Zelda II but better. Health drops! omg, that’s so helpful. Maybe I should try the harder difficulty level, though, as knowing there would be health drops at the default difficulty made me careless with the combat, as I was expecting the careful health management from Zelda II.

2. There is, to my taste, a little too much story. I feel like some of the dialogue could be streamlined. I am enjoying the story, though, and I would hate to miss out on plot points, so I’m not skipping it, but sometimes I wish the characters would just get on with it.

3. Contrariwise, what I assume is going to be the main plot point, Esme’s and Zalia’s romance, gets too little story! They meet and instantly start blushing and having little heart bubbles? The instant they meet? And the second time they sit together someone thinks they’re married? That feels a bit too fast for me, and I would prefer a slower build up so that the romance kinda sneaks up on you.

Hey, when you actually sell the full game, will you also sell it on itchio? For those of us weirdoes who don’t like using Steam.

I played this game “co-op” on stream with Brad (rainwarrior), and I had a lot of fun! It seems like the crowning achievement of many years of NESdev learning. It’s a lot of fun to see the gradual ramping up in gameplay, graphics and design improvement from H:H85, to H:H86 and H:H87.

By the way, for the “co-op” explanation: a second controller can tag in and take control of the characters. This works pretty well except in the shmup sections where there is no controller tagging out. If you’re playing with someone else as I was, when you’re running low on health it’s kinda fun to say, help help, tag in, tag in! And they do and you get to see how they’re doing.

H:H86 also had this feature, but it was also not really mentioned in the manual or game itself.

I think most NES emulators support the SNES mouse, actually. And the actual NES of course supports the SNES mouse.

YAAAASS finally it’s time for Ella to go on her most adventuresome quest!!

Eh, so it does sound like too much work. Don’t sweat it.

Would it be too much work to implement flip edge scrolling? It would be a welcome cosmetic improvement.

Looking forward to this one. Always hungry for more Zelda II. And thanks for planning a Linux build. I, for one, appreciate that.

Played this with some kids today. They were having a great time!

One thing, though: feels like there should be some incentive to not waste bullets. Maybe have a bullet limit and if you can’t hit the impostor within, say, five bullets, the impostor wins? Otherwise they were using the Zapper like a minigun and just spraying bullets everywhere.

Another thing: the kids realised they could just walk off the screen and never be shot. They knew which one was the impostor because he would never come back onscreen. Maybe some sort of penalty for being offscreen too long?

Another fan here. I fully agree. This game is shaping out to be a real beauty.

I wonder how difficult would it be to patch Crater Song to support a SNES gamepad, like Full Quiet.

It seems like the face buttons could be the second d-pad and the trigger buttons could be the song buttons.

I played a bit of the GBA demo and got to an “ending” of the NES demo.

I stand by my previous assessment that this is turning out to be awesome. The music, the artwork, the characters. This is already a great game. I loved meeting Tommy, Aníbal, Hedda, Josu, and of course Cronela.

That being said, I have some suggestions:

1. The English text needs some proofreading. There are bits of grammar that read like Spanish. The Spanish dialogue, on the other hand, was lots of fun, and I really enjoy your writing style.

2. I would suggest renaming some characters for the English version. For example, Josu should be Josh in English. Non-English names are okay, but after the third character having a very Spanish name, I was starting to wonder what part of the US was this game set in.

3. I know it’s still early, but I want more dialogue cues for why puzzle solutions are wrong! For example, why couldn’t I read the book when it was on the dresser, and I had to pick it up first? Why couldn’t I pick up a rock but had to push it instead? Why couldn’t I use the crowbar on every door I found, or even to break the padlock that goes into the basement? For most of these things Tommy just gives something like “I can’t use that” or “I can’t open that”, but I would like to hear why he can’t do it.

4. As others have said, the control scheme is unusual. A is accept, B is cancel. That is the standard NES choice. With the SNES mouse, it’s fine, though.

5. Double-tapping to speed up the pointer with the D-pad was an interesting choice. I kind of liked it over the acceleration that NES Maniac Mansion has. Just make it clearer in the in-game menu that this exists and it’s fine.

6. Tommy being a selectable object is interesting. I couldn’t quickly find anything that I could do with Tommy in the demo, but I can see how it can be interesting. A problem, though, is that when I try a solution and it doesn’t work, Tommy stands in front of the object I am trying to select. This was most noticeable in the loose brick escape from the dungeon, as that puzzle actually requires two consecutive actions on the brick.

7. Pixel hunting is a design choice that this game seems to embrace. It was fine on my giant-ass Trinitron, but on smaller CRTs remember that some of those pixels might be harder to find. An “assist” mode that flashes hotspots on the screen would be great. I think it can be accomplished on the NES by putting a small sprite on each hotspot. I’ve seen this approach recently on The Campsite, and I think it’s great.

All in all, great game, really delivering so far on impossible promises (who the heck decides to make the same game for 4 different retro consoles and one modern one??), and I am first in line to support the kickstarter when it goes live.

Just one minute in, watching the intro and THIS IS AWESOME ALREADY.

I have been very skeptical of being able to simultaneously develop the game for FIVE very different platforms, but now I really have hope that you really can do it!

¡Enhorabuena! ¡Bravo, hombre, bravo!

This is fun! I love precision platformers.

But a lives system?

Please give me infinite lives! And shorter respawn times! Let me die over and over again until I get the precision platforming right!

Same, was wondering why my white DVD logos died ;_;

I’ll try again and be a better DVD logo caretaker

This game is so beautiful. There’s a lot of obvious LttP influence here, but the music, the animations, the themes, all the little details like birds or trees swaying in the wind or Ella’s hair by the beach, the sound of the waves crashing on the surf, the attention to lore, the foreign language…

This game is really one of the best on the NES. The intro cut scene makes me tear up every time.

I just finished the demo, which already looks very complete. There’s lots of hints of possible future areas of exploration, which makes me think development has already advanced way past what’s in the demo. I did the first dungeon, which was very fun. I liked the music.

I have niggles: font is sometimes distracting. Combat can sometimes feel like I had no way of dodging. The text-window animation sometimes gives a sense of slowness, makes me impatient for it to appear or disappear. But none of these things have detracted from what so far is a gorgeous game.

I hope you manage to make a release to your satisfaction.

GODDAMMIT

This game was originally developed as a retro game with mostly NES-like limitations, so this port to the actual NES is remarkably faithful. As far as modern games go, Alwa’s is mostly adequate. It’s a good, simple metroidvania, not too long, but just the right length. As an NES game, though, it really shines. It has the rare quality of possibly being the only PC-to-NES port that has more content than the original PC game! The Famitracker-composed music was ported to the NES without modification, and the sprites and background and all pixel art mostly came through unscathed, except for some simplifications of the palette. The story and secrets are all there, and even a few new secrets made it in to this port! The mechanics and physics between three simple abilities provide an interesting challenge in almost every room of the game. Nothing feels out of place.

If this game had come out during the NES days, it would have been one of the best-known and most loved games of the system. It came out last year and it is one of my most loved games across all systems..

I just streamed this game co-op with a friend.

It’s a lot of fun!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1762761459

It’s very well-made and the game mechanics are very well thought-out. The music is catchy and the pixel art is clear and easy to read. In co-op there are also good ways to help your fellow firefighter, whether it be by guarding the hose or a particular room, or by splitting up and having one player grab keys or hose extensions which the other player can immediately use to open doors or bring the hose in further.

It’s pretty impressive how the mechanics are so well done, especially with the limitations of NES game design. Highly recommend this game!

Just bought this game, and it’s such a beautiful package! I love the cosmetics of the game, including the music and visuals configuration, plus that magical cylinder-roll effect that I have never before seen on an NES.

I am playing this game on an Everdrive on an original NTSC NES, and it plays perfectly. I have spent many game sessions trying to get a high score. Lots of puzzling fun!

Does the game have Power Pad support?

I just bought this game and I have to say I’m slightly disappointed. The music and visuals are good but the controls are slightly awkward. Mawthorne can stick to some walls like Ryu from Ninja Gaiden but unlike Ryu to do so you have to press up against the wall. You can either tap the attack button once to do a short attack or you can double tap for a long attack. There’s no apparent use for the short attack and you can’t walk while you attack (although you can attack in mid-air during a jump). It’s a bit of an unusual way to handle the usual platformer formula.

The game advertises itself as a Metroidvania, and while we may debate the meaning of that, to me that means it’s about exploration and obtaining abilities that open new paths of exploration. I have only played about 30 minutes and it’s not evident to me from the manual or the gameplay that any abilities will be unlocked. It appears to simply be what I would call an exploration platformer.

There are a few other niggles. Surprisingly, there’s no pause button, so if I needed to take a sudden break, I relied on the pause function of my emulator itself. There are no passwords or save files, so you have to do the game old school, in one sitting. There’s a limited map system: you can’t check a map at all times, only the one you see on the wall. I would have liked a better audio or visual cue for a few events like enemies being defeated or Mawthorne being damaged. Finally, a limited life system is also something I find unusual in something called a “Metroidvania” and reminds me more of exploration platformers like Blaster Master.

I don’t mean to sound too negative. The game isn’t bad and I had fun with my short time with it. I think I’ll go back to it and learn more to see what else the game has to offer. These are just my initial impressions after 30 minutes of gameplay.

Having to press start to get a UI prompt also confused me at first. I was also confused that start can’t skip the intro logos. So I just kept hitting start and going through a loop.

Hopefully there would be a prompt “are you sure?” so that new game doesn’t accidentally save an ongoing game!

Oh, man, thanks.

Am I the first one to have this UI confusion?

I am trying the demo but I can’t get past the title screen?

If I press start at the title screen, “new #cont” shows up on the bottom right but then the game just loops back to the NESMaker logo.

Well, it completely hardlocks my laptop within two seconds and forces me to do a hardware reboot, but other than that, it looks great and I am very grateful for the effort! :D

(seriously, though, don’t spend any more time working on this, we Linux users are small potatoes compared to the rest.)

Comrade, for the glory of the proletariat, let the fruit of our combined labour be a GNU/Linux version. Together, we can make this port happen!

This game shows promise but this feels like an incomplete and buggy build. If you press start too much during the intro cutscene, the nametable and attribute table get corrupted.

I was asking a few more people in the NESDev discord and they reported similar problems in other emulators, including the recommended Mesen.

This happened using an everdrive n8 pro, OS version 2.12, with G revision PPU and CPU on a famicom motherboard HVC-CPU-07:

Not obviously a bug, but from a game design perspective, it is awkward that key counts don’t reset after dying and that keys respawn after entering, leaving a room. Way too easy to get infinite keys.

After clearing what I assume is “level 1”, I was softlocked in this screen, with my character spinning around in the middle of it, and no further inputs worked.

If the developer can debug the game, this looks like it could be a fun platformer.

Sorry for the port begging, but, yeah… I really enjoyed the previous Linux port.

Hopefully that doesn’t have the post-Catalina trouble that the Mac port has.

I had so much fun with this! I played the NES version and got to the end. I was interested in Ling's story and struggle. It took me several tries because it's difficult to have to do the game deathless, but in the end I was glad I did.

More, please! I'd be happy to pay for more!

You mean only the ROM? No, it all comes bundled together.

I see this is a Unity game, and I understand that Unity can do Linux builds. Is it easy or even feasible to provide a Linux build? Wine is always a slightly inferior alternative.

I can offer some help to make the build if you'd like.

Is it fixed now? Can you download using the app?

Another vote for a Linux version here, but I have no idea if that's at all feasible. It really depends on how the game was made in the first place.

Physical release is still for sale if you want one:

https://www.brokestudio.fr/product/micro-mages/

A Famicom version for your Famicom or Dendy is also about to be released.

Try again. It's working for me at the moment.

You can also buy the game on Steam, but that's a separate purchase.

When you navigate to the download page on your PC, you don't see these four downloads?

If you download the installer, you should open it to install it on Windows.

If you instead download the portable version, just unpack it anywhere and run the game from it, without needing to install anything.

I believe the PC version is also effectively emulation, since the game is made for the NES. The PC version is probably just another emulator conveniently wrapped around the NES ROM.

No, games added to the bundle after you paid for it should also show up.

From the bundle page,

https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality

click on download at the very top left. That will show you the whole bundle. Then search for Micro Mages by title: