itch.io

It seems like zooming in and out of the webpage effects a lot of the gameplay.  I had terrible luck with the miners when my zoom was set to 100%.  They wouldn't climb back up to chop another block after they finished the first one, but it looked like they were programmed to do so.  

And when I upgraded their speed (I think lvl 6 with the red boots) they became so fast they could not center on a block to break it rendering them completely useless.  

Also I could not figure out what the secret Click Radius power up was or how to unlock it.  

Zooming out on the webpage itself seemed to be the answer.  I set zoom to 25% so the game was ridiculously tiny and the miners were able to dig again and they could climb back up to break multiple blocks after finishing their first one.  I think even setting zoom to 75% is enough to get these features to function as intended.

And hovering over the center of the spire (at 25%) allowed my power click to reach nearly every block in the layer without moving.  

Anyway, was finally able to max out every upgrade after that.  Fun game.  For me the bugs were simultaneously obnoxious and a fun mystery to solve.  

I'm on a Windows computer with a Chrome browser.  

Aw man!  This game is so cute and chill.  Why the nudity?  So many other fun and family friendly surprises could've been hiding behind the blinds!  Aside from that, terrifically cute game.   

You're playing that on a Linux handheld, right?  Not an actual GBA?

Update today?  Awesome!  What changed?  Still cheering for you!

Wow!  I've played the older version of this and loved it!  So cool to see all the under-the-hood updates!  Not so mention some of the quality-of-life upgrades you've listed.

I'll definitely be playing this again.  My wife and I love this nanogram-style games.  I'll have to show her this one.  

Oh man!  

*blows in cartridge*

Let's do this!

So excited!

Oh gosh!  I just caught this.  Are those Sonic's shoes in the foreground?  

I don’t know if anyone’s told you this or not, but gameboy games have absolutely no business being this beautiful. Dial the artwork and animation knobs down a bit. And maybe don’t polish the game mechanics and story telling so much either. This is supposed to be homebrew after all. 

Good grief…

Amateur…

This game is so cool!  Captures the look and feel of a classic retro.  Is it my eyes, or is there an occasional "snow" effect in the background?

This looks so awesome!  Is it getting close to kickstarter stage?

You bet! Have fun!

oh nice! I will be doing that!

I play on an EZ Flash Jr for my gameboy. No mod required. I think they run around $40 now. There are cheaper knock-off flash carts you can get though. 

Actually EZ flash is a knock-off of Everdrive. Any of those are great options honestly. I’ve run mine for over a year now and I play it all the time. It’s as easy as popping the micro SD into my computer, putting the game file on it, and popping it back into the flash cart.

Oh this is fun!  The future feature list looks incredible too!  I've heard link cable games can be challenging to build.  Good luck!

Oh gosh, this is cute!  Fun unique idea!  I love that it generates GIF's!  So cool!

This game is awesome.  Not gonna lie, when I first opened it and moved around I thought, "this won't hold my attention for long."  I think the tiny sprite and the movement felt a little floaty or something.  Not sure.  But I pressed on and before long I discovered the catch.  

This game is built on very tight platforming. Challenge rating is very high.  It reminds me a bit of I Wanna Be The Guy mixed a bit with Celeste.  I couldn't put it down!  As I kept playing it kept going on!  I'd come across a room and be like "nope!" Come back to it a while later and have equipment that enabled me to do it, or just a better handle on the controls.  The map is very open, but also kind of grows in challenge as you move through it.  

Super super well done!  I have not finished it, but I definitely will keep playing until I do.

(Also, I'm playing on a flashcart on my GBA... and I'm not one to use save states for the purpose of easing the difficulty or fast-tracking through stuff, but... I don't know how you're supposed to complete this game without it.  For real! So... I apologize for cheating, but also I intend to continue.  I am not this good.  Maybe a day will come when I'll cycle back around and play through save-state-free.  But it is not this day!)

Thanks for making it and thanks for making it free.  Just sent you a Coffee.  It's totally worth at least that much!

you’re welcome. And thank you too!

You bet!  Here it is, looking and feeling grand!

I totally get the style choice for the cyberpunk. you sure don't need to apologize for your design choices.  It's your game.  You make what you like and makes sense to you!  

SOme day soon I hope to be making gb games of my own.  I hope I can do so as well as you've done.  I mean it!

This game feels really slick!  I've played through 2 endings.  PLayed on my GBA using a flashcart.  What a fun experience!

The art style slams!  You're really a fantastic artist.  music was fun and energetic!  The movement and collision mechanics felt really clean.  level design was great! 

My only critiques would be the mature content (I could've done without the nudity, personally.  But you did give fair warning) and the attack mechanic.  At times attacking seemed to lurch forward, but not always.  maybe there's some intentional dash mechanic there.  If so maybe incorporating a visual sign to instruct how to activate it would be useful.  If it's a bug, it's not game-breaking and sometimes I found myself trying to utilize it when jumping and attacking.

overall, great game!  I found it very challenging, but not infuriating.  Really good balance.  I can see a lot of growth in your dev skills since delmonico.  keep it up!  I enjoy playing your games!

Just played this on my GBA using a flash cart.  Very enjoyable little game.  Closer to a visual novel than a game imo, but still very cute and fun.  

My only complaint would be the cleaning mechanic.  Pressing the action button when coming across cobweb would have been more enjoyable if it either brought up a minigame to clean it, or just made it disappear.  The dialogue box asking if you want to clean it felt a bit clunky, and by the end of the game felt like it drug the game out without making it more fun. 

Aside from that, I loved the game.  I haven't completed both (or all?) endings, but I did the good one and I could see where the choices split.  Oh, the music!  So good! Artwork was a plus as well! 

This looks incredible.  Is there a place to buy a digital ROM of the full game?  Looks like the physical cart's been produced and sold out unless I'm missing something. 

This game absolutely rocks.  It feels a bit like Shovel Knight in how it plays and the dialogue and everything.  So so good!  If you're still planning on further development, good luck!  You've nailed it as far as what you've already done.

I agree with some of the other comments I'm seeing below about the boss fights feeling a bit flat.  But I also get the time crunch for Jams and just how complicated coding a single boss fight can be in comparison to the rest of the game.

Aside from that the basic gameplay is so satisfying.  Challenging, but not brutal.  Artwork, sound, and music is also really stellar!

Alright boss, I've played through most of what you've got posted on itch.  My mind is blown!  You're such a talented dev and artist!  Sad to see you're not currently working on this one, as it's a total gem!  This feels like the early portions of a Zelda-level GB game.  You've got so much variety packed into this fun-to-play action/RPG-esque adventure game!  The artwork, the dialogue, the character progression.  It all feels so well designed. 

I had put this on my flashcart a month or so ago, got busy and forgot about it.  Just picked it back up and played until I think I ran out of stuff to do and was like "Well, let's go buy the full game!" Only to rediscover that it was in development, but looks like it's not anymore...

I totally get it.  Reworking an old project such a drag!  So take this either as encouragement to push through the pain to complete it, or as accolades for a fantastic old project.  Whichever you please.  

Looking forward to whatever you've got in the works.  Thanks for posting this one.  I enjoyed the heck out of it and will replay again focusing on different skills next go around.  

This is unique and such a blast!  I love the repair mechanic and the artwork!  Sprites for all your ships are fantastic!

This is such a fun, quick satisfying little game!  I've not played anything like it before!

So good!  I loved playing this.  I love the shop and the pickups.  I love the general feel of screaming through an asteroid field.  It feels natural and chaotic.  I really love the planets in the background and your star system.  It looks so cool!  Your music is great too!  Overall amazing game!

Btw, I'm here because @Krystman posted your game on his Advanced tutorial.  I too was late to the showcase.  Maybe I should send him my project as well, although it's a lot rougher around the edges than yours and does not deviate from the original recipe as well as yours does!

Seriously, this is fantastic!  Keep it up!

Thoughts after completing the demo on my GBA.

I am still floored how good the visuals and overall feel of the game is!

One thing that stood out to me on a second playthrough was that there's not a good indication that battling does anything for you.  I mean, it's fun to battle, which at the end of the day should be enough when playing a game.  But there's no XP, or money or anything. Not sure you want to introduce that sort of mechanic, but something that helps the player feel like they've progressed even when they stop to battle someone on the train or in the city they could otherwise walk past might be fun.  Personally it entices me to hunt for fights rather than view them as obstacles.  

You do such a good job story-telling.  Your dialogues feel good and meaningful without being cheesy.  Props!

incredible visuals!  Controls feel nice!  Such a great little game.  Played it on my GBA last night.  Really enjoyed it.  I totally agree with ChunkySteveo below.  If you're finished developing this, I'd just call it Bark Sequelo and leave the Demo off the title.   You might call out that it's a short game, but he's absolutely right.  This is more feature-full than many other GB-esque games on itch.  

That being said, I would love to see a longer version of this game.  If you're interested in working that way, you could also leave this as the demo and keep developing a longer-play game to sell.  Or just leave it as-is!  Haha, it's fantastic!

Whatever you decide to do, props on an incredible project!  I love it!

I can't get over the Solar Striker feel here.  It's absolutely perfect!  Can't wait to get through all the levels.  Thanks for building this!  I can see so much attention to detail all throughout what I've played and in your screenshots.

Oh no,  not misled at all!  It was a good joke, it just got me wondering.  

Btw, this game is so addicting.  Thanks for making it!

Also went through and replayed with the music so I could confirm that it too was a great aspect of this super fun little game!

What a fun game!  Art style is perfect, upgrade system is fun, controls are intuitive! (Sorry, I don't know if the sound/music was good.  I had it muted, but I'm sure it was great too!)

You mention sending it into space on a dusty cartridge... *could* this be released as a .gb, .gbc, or .gba file so that it can be played on a dusty cartridge?

This looks and feels so Gameboy-y, but I'm guessing it's more than a Gameboy could actually handle.  But... had to ask.  

Found you from Eligos' post.  (Started on itch > X > Broke Studio > back to itch.  I thought it was a funny journey.)  I've been hunting GB Homebrew for years.  I can't believe I've not come across this before! Always fun to find there are talented/committed devs I haven't discovered yet!

It looks unbelievably packed and polished.  Will be purchasing soon!  I understand (a bit) how much work goes into a game.  Thanks for all the time and care you clearly put into this!  It really looks incredible!

*happy gorilla noises*

I remember playing this with my brother on my grandpa's DOS computer!  

After playing for hours our favorite cheat became flinging the bananas straight through the buildings at the highest speed possible.  I love that this game recreates even that loophole.  

Well done! You've built a tiny time machine!

I don't have a mini, but now I want one!  Super cool project!

Woohoo!  This is such a fun game!  I haven't quite nailed it down, but it feels like you could bounce pretty fluidly from one fuse to the next platform.

Since every level seems to leave you still trying to escape the blackhole, the dialogue might make more sense if it says something like "you've managed to keep from being pulled in."  

Love the artwork and general feel of the game

This is amazing!  GuitarHero, Jack Sparrow, Tenacious D, killer pixel art and four AA batteries all boldly sailed into a maelstrom together!

I love shanties, chiptune, and retro gaming so this game looks like a must-have in my book! I can't wait to play it on real hardware.  Fingers crossed you all end up selling digital versions too for those of us collecting on flash carts.

This was bonkers hard for me to play on a keyboard since the key layout (although standard) was flipped to what my thumbs would be doing on a handheld console.  I couldn't make my brain accept the flip.  But that just makes me want to play on my GB all the more!

Only complaint is the flash before the portraits appear in the dialogue boxes.  I love the artwork.  Once it's on screen it really sells the immersion.  But the flash on every new set of words became a bit jarring when reading through a conversation or a set of instructions.  

For real, watching intently for the full release!

This looks incredible!  Phenomenal artwork and sprite animation!  Pretty brutal gameplay to start off with, but the difficulty level is not a turn-off.  

Crouch feels like it's missing.  I know it's not referred to or implied anywhere, I just found myself trying to crouch the entire time I was playing.  

Some of the obstacles (spikes) felt a tad out of place on the stairs.  Not unfair or anything like that, but they just visually didn't "fit" to me."

Aside from that, this feels well polished.  Can't wait to see (and buy) the full release!

Cute, cute!  Great job turning it into a complete game such a short time!

This game is clever as heck!  Thanks for the demake and the link!  I've never heard of this game before, but it looks like exactly what I like to play