itch.io

There is one other thing that I feel I should point out before I finish writing this walkthrough and making all the route maps. I feel there are several hints that the player is "supposed to" get the flute after Level 4, but technically, you can get it after Level 2, if you stand in just the right spot, as there is just enough overlap of the flame sprite to hit row below Link. Is that something you'd like to change/prevent somehow, or will you leave it in?

I actually made the partial map from the complete map, for effect and to hide some spoilers. I'm doing essentially two guides. One has everything in detail, and the other is designed to provide some assistance without spoilers. This items screen is from right after the big fight, so I'm notably missing any potions, and the other bottle is empty.

I did NOT beat the final boss on my first try. I spent a good five minutes at least just trying to survive long enough to figure out what to do. I loved it! LOL

BTW, is Shrine 1 in Tobio's Hollow?

Finished two playthroughs. I'm now fairly satisfied that I THINK I found everything. I had missed one thing the first time! There were a couple of confusing moments that I thought might be bugs, but after reading the comments here and watching certain parts of Chapo's play video, it seems they are working as intended. Only three things that still seem odd are a room design where the floor is oddly inconsistent, bizarre incident with a wall hand, and peculiar accident involving autosave.

The room is the one on the bottom left corner of Shrine 3. It's the type of room where the floor is typical just black, but for some reason there's a kind of "step" at the doorway.

Strange behavior with a wall hand in Level 7. For some reason, instead of just warping me to the entrance, it was carrying me over the dungeon map. I may have kill it right as it was taking me away? Then, it drained my health as it was carrying me through the dungeon, I died, the fairy revived me, and it dropped me in a random room. I became semi-translucent until I returned to the room where it got me, at which point I immediately was teleported back to the dungeon entrance and became solid.

The autosave issue was partly my fault. Somehow, I accidentally opened a second iteration of the game without realizing it at first. I guess I closed the "wrong" one. I ended up with a save file where the power bracelet had been taken, but I did not have it. I had to scrub that playthrough.

I've got all the maps done for the walkthrough, and I'm working on finishing writing up the rest of it. Here's a sort of decorative "Old Map" I made for it. Let me know what you think.

I've only just finished the first dungeon, but I'm loving it so far! As I go, I'm mapping the game and taking notes for a walkthrough guide. I've already established that, given the nature of it as a type of "fangame," I can't go putting the walkthrough anywhere like GameFAQs or IGN, so ... I'm not entirely sure what I'll DO with the walkthrough when it's done. That being the case, I have no particular requirements in mind for formatting it, either.

 So, I have two questions.
One, would you like me to send you a copy of the maps and guide when they're done?
Two, do you have any preference for the format of the walkthrough? The others I've made were also not the type for places like IGN, so I just made them in GoogleDocs and shared the link in the fan space where I found the game.

It would be nice to have some kind of clue as to where the demo/prototype ends. I got stuck and couldn't tell if I was missing something or if that was the end of the content. (I got the ... "megaphone"?)

After reading your updates, I feel like you're on a fine trajectory. I have also experienced the struggle of NOT being a natural at pixel art, and I like the Godot engine, although I only worked with it briefly. Congrats on your progress with the art. That is a big improvement! As for grass, let me tell ya, I've struggled with that at several different levels of graphic size, and it always feels like a struggle to make grass look like grass and not some sort of messy argyle sweater. In an 8-bit format, what you have there is perfectly acceptable: mostly just green with a few flowers, shoots of taller grass, etc. here and there. My guess is, the map feels bare because you're thinking of Zelda 1, which was very full of bushes and other things leaving the player less room to move about. I don't see any reason to feel like you have to fill every screen to the brim with objects, as long as there's enough there to give it some aesthetic character. I am curious how exactly you do most of the art and tiling. For the record, Paint.net is slightly more useful than the basic Microsoft Paint, but not as complicated as more advanced tools, and it's still free. I know there's better stuff out there for pixel art, and I think some of them have a proper tiling feature.

I recognize that, not being sure what you have already changed or have plans to change, some of my advice/suggestions may be superfluous. That said...

Making the hit detection on the corners of walls slightly rounded would make it easier to walk through single space gaps/exits. It was a slight struggle to get out of the graveyard, because the character really has to be facing that exit very straight.
Having the A and B buttons be Enter and the actual B button felt very weird and makes it equally awkward to play with either the arrows or WASD. I found it odd that the key was a "Quest Item" but also equippable. I'm used to the term "Quest Item" implying a thing is mostly representative, but I suppose that's not a hard and fast rule.

I'm looking forward to seeing more in the future. You're off to a fine start. There's certainly nothing wrong with getting all your art laid out ahead of time, but if you start to feel burned out, I recommend you take that as a subconscious que to switch to another aspect of the game's design. Best of luck!