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A jam submission

Gloomglow: PrologueView game page

Short Castlevania-inspired Gameboy action-platformer prologue story
Submitted by Jagger Byte Games (@Retro_Blasted), SavestateCorrupted (@savestate_crptd) — 4 minutes, 13 seconds before the deadline
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Gloomglow: Prologue's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sound / Music#123.2633.263
Gameplay / Fun#233.0003.000
Graphics#243.2113.211
Game Design#252.9472.947
Overall#302.8772.877
Innovation / Originality#342.7892.789
Theme#422.0532.053

Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
Takes place in the medieval dark ages as a story being told

Did you use any assets?
Yes, everything is noted on the itch page. Some tilesets were used and I heavily edited sprites. It's all documented!

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Solid start! The game has a nice mood to it and it seems like people have already addressed lots of the bugs that weren't able to be ironed out in the 1-week timeframe. I would add: the scene entrance and exit points/triggers usually felt a bit off, like not fully at the edge of the screen. A whole segment of climbing the tower can be bypassed because the player gets deposited at the top of the scene after the cutscene of looking up at the top of the tower.

For the slow movement speed, the platforming was pleasantly forgiving. I really enjoyed the photorealistic cutscenes but there's a lot of visual noise that makes some pictures hard to make out (again, optimizing all of that could take longer than the week we had!) I really enjoyed the tone of the captions and text -- I honestly thought the game text was really well-written.

Developer(+1)

thank you so much! This is a really encouraging comment for me, I'm a writer first and foremost so I'm glad you enjoyed the little story I laid the groundwork for and I was worried about whether or not the game itself was compelling enough. So far comments have been pretty reassuring that it has potential as a full game! I am eager to upload the patched version haha 

Submitted(+1)

Great Game, it reminds me castlevania 

Developer

that's what I was going for, thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Great game, a little difficult for me, I went until the moment where you have to go down in the void between the spikes, and I died several times at that moment. it makes you want to see much more! Small criticisms all the same: I find that the music of the beginning does not really make middle age, but rather futuristic adventure, the second sticks better! I also had some problems of collisions, for example with the snakes, or if I wanted to kill them, I was inevitably touched, because too close, but for a Jam of 7 days big job, congratulations :) .


Developer

luckily I fixed both of those things already!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game that reminds me of castlevania! I had some issues where i think triggers took a long time to activate?

Developer

was it some of the scene transitions? I'm not sure what's causing that tbh

Submitted(+1)

Yeah it was. I felt like I hit the trigger and then it happened a bit later

Submitted

How did you make the game?

Developer

GB Studio

Submitted(+1)

Hey, I recognize some of those tiles ;) Glad to see them being utilized in a jam!

Developer

haha yes, love them!

Submitted(+1)

I like the game, but I kept free falling to my death on the spikes. Will keep at it and hopefully get through it. Like the art and music. A checkpoint or save system would be nice so that you don't have start all over again. All in all a good game so far.

Developer(+1)

If you're referring to the second downward falling section, that part is messed up. I didn't leave a gap large enough to get through because I ran out of time and couldn't test it fully! Once the jam is over I'll upload a new build with lots of bug fixes, smoothing out levels like that, and finishing the boss fight.

I'm glad you like the parts that are working as intended right now!

Submitted(+1)

A really cool game! I had a few issues, but I read that those have already been addressed by others. Apart from that stuff: I liked the atmosphere, the story, the art and the music. Well done!

Developer

Thank you! And yes, just poor time management on my end to get that stuff tested and fixed. One extra hour would have helped T_T haha

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Hey, was really interesting to play!

I haven't beaten it yet, I've gotten to the falling spikes part and kept dying. Part of why I think that part is very tough is that the collision box for the player seems to be a few pixels wider than the player sprite, thus making it tough to judge. For example, I could be on the edge of a platform but it looks like the character is floating next to it.
On my last play-through, I got stuck where the snake and heart are under the stairs, but I see you're aware of that soft-lock.
Lastly, there were a few times when I would kill an enemy, and they would explode but I would still take damage after the fact. I'm assuming that this is because when the die their sprite animation changes but they are still technically there? This is made tougher with the throwing knife's distance being fairly short. 
I had this issue in my platformer DE '22 and solved it by giving the enemy actors a local variable named "Deadly". When set to TRUE, it would cause the player to take damage On Hit. When set to FLASE, it wouldn't trigger the collision script. So as soon as the enemy is killed, before the death animation for it happens, I set "Deadly" to false so that the player isn't unnecessarily hit.

I enjoyed my time with the game so far and liked how diverse the level design was without feeling confusing  or inconsistent! The progression of the story as you moved up the castle really made it feel like I was on a journey which was fun :)

Edit - I might've missed something, but what was the tie in with the "time" theme?

Developer(+1)

Thank you, I'm really glad you like it so far. I'm aware of those level issues, they've already been fixed in the next version, but I ran out of time for the jam haha. That's a perfect idea to solve the collision issue, I'll definitely do that.

For the theme, it's just that it's a story being told in the past, the rules were pretty open for interpretation and said taking place in the past is fine.

Developer

Just tried out the local variable trick and that worked I think! Thanks again!

Developer

false alarm, I'll have to do more tweaking it seems!

Submitted(+1)

Fun game, really nice graphics and art :)

Developer

Thank you! I'm really glad you liked it.

Submitted(+1)

This game has a real broody mood to it, which is great! I especially like how you squeezed realistic images in-between the rooms. My main complaint is the frame rate is too slow. Infact the whole game could probably be twice the speed. Monsters that I hit would  still move forward and hurt me. I got stuck under the stairs with a snake in a box and a heart. This guy is such a hard-ass he can't bend underneath a platform. 

Developer (1 edit)

Aware of both of those issues you mentioned, thank you for the kind words!!! I was trying to emulate the slow, deliberate feel of retro Castlevania but once I go back to expand and update this I think I'll speed things up and make the player character taller.

Appreciate you 🙏