Got all 3 endings. Wonderful little exploration of the topic. Could have benefited from some music/sounds!

My two cents on passing: To me it meant the world when I just couldn't do it at all yet. When I managed to finally pass on some occasions, after being relieved initially, it started to become less important. Now it's fine when I don't pass, because I knew I could if I wanted to. When I got to know about cis women being misgendered based on their looks or voice too, the whole thing started becoming kinda absurd to me.

life D:

Dude, thank you for playing my game! I had to rush this so much as the jam deadline hit and in the end had to end it with a "to be continued". The spicy meat was just the most reasonable thing I could think of in the context if what items I had made by that point, I plan to flesh this out and finish it for when I put it into my grand game which will be Skullz 'n Skeletonz. Meet you there, perhaps?

Kindly add this game about a frog and his friends: https://pizzamakesgames.itch.io/frog-n-friends

Thank you very much for the entertaining LPs! Matter of fact, I've just released a minor update to the game that incorporates a lot of fixes based on what you were confused/frustrated with, so, thank you doubly!

Heya! I tried to mitigate the repetition a bit by randomizing the starting section but yeah, as adventure games go there's definitely a bunch of trial and error involved. I did try to keep the puzzles mostly sensible, though.

Hi there! There are quite a few puzzles to solve and ways to progress, it's hinted at in the game's description on it's page. The game does keep going once you die, if you restart it and choose to continue, everything you did in the apartment, like putting an item into that box, stays the way it was even if you close the game (or the game closes on you). I like to leave that stuff for the player to figure out, though, so I can understand your frustration if you didn't know cause not a lot of games put enough faith in their players to do that these days.

You're absolutely right about there not being any way to quit the game in fullscreen mode, though! I only ever tested it windowed where there's a little x to close it. Guess I gotta implement that, or pretend you're in it for good once you decide to open this window into another world. spoooooky~

Thank you so very much for the kind review of my little game!

I was actually never happy with the way you moved in that apartment hallway to the point where I had two versions of it and ended up using the one you had to experience in favor of progressing other parts of the game, but your suggestion is just what I've been trying to get to, so I've implemented it exactly as you suggested and updated the game with a new build.

I hope you don't mind me crediting you and using your exact words and illustration in the devlog update. <3

Oh yeah, I read up on that and my eyes rolled backwards somewhere at the V-Blank. I tried to kinda faux-restrict to it but bowed out at the atribute clash. Same, maybe one of these days.

you win

Playing yours right now and can confirm that it's already much more interesting than playing my own one as A: I have no idea what's gonna happen next and B: can gather lots of inspiration for how to possibly do things differently than how I would make them work intuitively. In short: I'm having a lot of fun playing your game over here!

One word: woooooooaaaaaahhhhhhhhh

Seen a lot of this on Twitter and oh my isn't this ever the absolute cutest. Can't even critique this in any way, that little purple man just stretched his legs straight into my heart <3

Oh I love the part where you're abiding to actual NES restrictions. Then again, might've went with the actual resolution and authentic music, but of course it's your choice how far you take it. That way the music reminds of some Commander Keen remix and that's just as fine. Gameplay is great, reminds me of Little Nemo: The Dream Master for what that's worth. Looking forward to giving this a full playthrough!

Totally rad, reminds me of Spy Hunter a lot. I liked how the first enemy pulled up behind me and ran right into a pair of exploding barrels. The only bummer I feel is that there's no audio at all (that's not just an issue on my side, is it?). If you don't have anybody to do some for you yet, I wouldn't mind supplying some sfx and tunes, actually. But you don't have to take me up on that offer at all, of course. Either way, super neat, great visuals, too!

Oh sweet! I've been like an accoustic presence in the early p8 days, did that contra jingle cart and such. Will love2 check it out.

The windows build is even the same size!! Now we're like monozygotic jam twins!

Hey, this game looks pretty similar to the one I made, rad! We're like inadvertant jam siblings now.

A great entry. Love that I can even load it up and look at the gallery on my phone <3

Rated 100/5 Chicken

Very nice game, reminds me of Racket Boy from another jam years ago, and somehow Gadget Twins for the Genesis. Will also come back for more!

The art-game-part is fully functional and the style fits 100% perfectly and ties it all together. On top of that, others get to see your art and you get to see the art of others. No complaints, I love this!

This is the best game in the world. I am literally in love with it. My eyes have turned into hearts and chicken are circling my head, clucking and pooping eggs. Well done, sunny side up. Is that the Pico-8 tracker I'm hearing?

A single suggestion: It would be super cool if, after you've typed out your series of words, hitting space inbetween, you could hit enter to kinda finish your sentence, even if it's just meaningless garbage. I image it feeling as if you were charging your punch through typing all these words and releasing it by pressing enter, finishing the sentence and throwing the punch at the same time. The thought kinda came as I kept typing and felt weird not ever pressing enter after hitting space so many times, seemingly writing the longest sentence in history. Just a suggestion!

I've been looking forward to this one, and not in vain! Super cool, super fun.

HELP

Okay, wow, this is amazing.

Oh my god this is the best.

Give it some crunchy sfx and maybe the ambient noise of a giant PC struggling to compute the complex calculations and you've got it!

Also my face when this turned from a funny joke in level 1 to a really challenging game in level 2. My respect, sir.

First one I tried, cause that cartridge is just the best.

Cool concept, fits with the case! I gave up on level 4, couldn't figure out a state in which nothing was overlapping for the life of me. Could benefit from some like vaporwave soundtrack and maybe a snap-in if you're close to the solution. Overall a good idea that could use a bunch more execution.

Devlog Entry #2.16.12.17

With last week's screenshot update already revealing one of the destinations these crossroads'll be leading us to, namely Bedlam, which will be the subject of Devlog entries to come, let's take a look at where the other ones'll take us.

A cliff and a forest, places that might be familiar to players of the original and give me a chance to tell you of this game's relationship to it's predecessor, which had you start on a cliff and end up in a forest not soon after.

Basically, Skullz 'n Skeletonz will serve both as a sequel and a prequel to Skullz, with the core storyline of the latter being left intact but refitted to and retold during the new storyline that is now expanding around it.

While Skullz was strictly linear, Skullz 'n Skeletonz will be all about making choices, and the locations presented so far already start reflecting that, with this abstract line in the void, which would've taken you from the cliff to the woods in the original, now being retconned to not have ever been anything but our good old Crossroads, turning a linear path into a branching one quite literally.

That's it for this weeks update. Next up, we may be actually finally arriving in Bedlam.

Screenshot Update!

Ever so close to Bedlam. I'm keeping a consistent palette between these, though I liked how this one looked before conforming it, too:

Devlog Entry #1.16.12.04

Music: https://pizzamakesmusic.bandcamp.com/track/in-new-09-charcreation

Right now, our protagonists are at these crossroads.

I'm not planning to spoil the entire game, entry by entry, but for these first couple updates I think it wouldn't hurt to set the stage and outline the game by following it's fictional chronology for at least a little bit, keeping in mind that this first prologue chapter is eventually gonna be put out as a demo to a broader audience before releasing the game proper anyway.

These crossroads are also already being preceded by a handful of other scenes that I won't go into detail about now, so I think it's safe not to worry about being robbed of any fresh eyes you might eventually be laying upon this game just by keeping up with whatever's gonna be exposed right here.

Anyway, we're obviously being presented with four directions to eventually wander off to.

How you're going to get Yendor, the skeleton carrying you around, with your player character being the skull he's holding, to actually start shuffling down any of those paths is one of these mysteries (It's not much of a mistery) I'll be sprinkling about this devlog to not waste any precious novelty to these types of puzzle situations. Though, presenting the player with a branching path like that right from the get-go is what I hope will help make this game very interesting to play and replay, as not just one of them will be right, with the other three being wrong or unavailable, but all of them will be a viable choice.

This is this first thing I wasted a lot of potential with (but also cut down a lot of development time) on the predecessor, where you were constantly presented with a number of choices but got nothing except jokey answers on all but one, which did have it's charm, but only once.

So with that, we're about to be visiting one of three different locations, and I think that might've been enough words for now.

If you're more into looking at pretty pictures, feel free to check out my twitter where I'll be talking less and showing more, in a less refined and more frequent manner, especially stuff that might not ever make it into the final game or even this devlog.

Sorry, I make music myself! (As I hoped would be evident by that giant image up top *cough*)

Welcome to the devlog of Skullz 'n Skeletonz!
Itch.io Community Edition!

This game's a surreal Choose 'n Pick Adventure set in it's own unique world filled with spooky 'ol skeletonz, and you, a skull.

Your goal is essentially to make sense of your situation which will become more and more apparent as you progress through it's (eventually to be) 10+ chapters. The game will be split into two parts, stretching over about five chapters each, with your actions and decisions in one part influencing the situations you face in the other.

Unlike most Point 'n Click's, this game is controlled solely by keyboard input, with you picking your actions from the textbox at the bottom, hence the term Choose 'n Pick.

That's not the only thing to set it apart from your usual Point 'n Click, though. There is no inventory to speak of, even though you'll be gathering and using items left and right, your view isn't locked to the same third person view for the entire game and you'll be having bossfights.

I'll try to be posting bi-weekly updates about the development of this game, along with some gifs of what's new or a piece of music as well as some less frequent posts about the technicalities of it all, for example how the art or audio is made. On that note, the entire WIP soundtrack of the game is constantly up for your listening pleasure and will get updated frequently over here:

This game is effectively the sequel to the first game I've ever made, called Skullz, and has been in on- and off development for about two years and I'm more determined than ever to make it the greatest game I possibly can and eventually release it to Steam Greenlight and a couple other platforms, like Itch.io! That's all I got for now. If you don't wanna wait for the next devlog post, you can always take a peek at my Twitter, where I'm posting whatever whenever: https://twitter.com/Pizzamakesgames

The fact that this 3D game runs as smooth in Pico-8 is nothing short of amazing, and then there's a whole game ahead of you instead of it just being a "hey look I did 3D." techdemo. A+

Uploaded the first playable build, v0.1: http://pizzamakesgames.itch.io/the-evil-warlock-tower

got most of the logic in place after a long day of coding.