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How does your game meet GBJam's theme?
Ember Souls is a villain protagonist, souls-like 2d platformer action game where you play as a soul devourer driven by an insatiable hunger. Using a pixel physics-based attraction mechanic, you must consume souls to survive. Fail to feed, and you will be consumed by your own hunger.
Witness the inevitable cosmic doom from the chasm of the abyss, endlessly devouring souls in an unstoppable descent into darkness under the dead sky. Inspired by Cormac McCarthy-esque idea of primal evil, and Dark Souls.
Ember Souls satisfy the following GBJam constraints
- Primary theme: Gameboy
- Secondary theme: Spooky
- Resolution: 160px x 144px
- Palette: 4 colors
- Control: D-pad, A, B, Start, Select
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Comments
It's an Interesting concept and you've got a good start here. The only critique I have at this stage is that it looks like the resolution is too high, there are some noticeable sub pixels happening with the eye movement, screen movement and left of the soul bar. Keep at it! Continue making, continue improving.
Thank you for the feedback, glad you find it interesting! Yes, you are correct, right in the details! haha;
For the particle rendering, I truncated the particle floating point position to the nearest grid position, to emulate and respect the pixel constraint, but did not applied neither to the character, nor to the eye rendering.
I implemented the pixel constraint to the character and eye, will experiment with the parameters.
I'll update after the Jam to increase the low-res representation coherence, together with more polish that I wanted to make, but could not due to the jam time constraint.
Very interesting mechanic also I loved the art style and color palette. Great Entry!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!
Absorbing those enemies is so satisfying and very smart decision to include a counter that goes over the maximum so no soul is wasted! I really love that palette too! Awesome job!
Thanks for the compliment and spending your time to play the prototype! Glad you enjoyed devouring souls from the minions under the dead sky! Wanted to explore the gameplay more thoroughly in depth using the soul mechanics to design challenges, but the inevitable time constraint got us.
Nice particle effect while absorbing the enemies holding B button (X on the keyboard), and I think it can be replicated on an actual gameboy.
The 4 selected colors fit the mood very well.
The giant eye monster in the background that opens and closes the eyelid is a very interesting and impressive effect.
Note to other players: if you walk all the way to the right, you'll find a cliff. avoid falling into it, as you'll have to wait until your health deploys until losing and being able to play again. There's a cliff to the left after walking a while too. Didn't try jumping into it but I guess the same would happen.
Thank you for the kind words!
Yes, the idea was to experiment with the concept of pixel physics engine, but due to the time limitation it became more of a tech demo than an actual game.
After the Jam, I'll do a proper level design, enemy design, combat design, and progression, with some music and sound effects.
The giant eye monster is a cute buddy that will help you devour more souls along the descent into the darkness.
Thank you kindly for the note too! I'll update the page and add as a known issue as soon as possible.