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A jam submission

Elsie's Out of PotionsView game page

Help Elsie Make Some Potions!
Submitted by jeffzzq — 4 hours, 58 minutes before the deadline
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Elsie's Out of Potions's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Gameboy Soul#1023.8753.875
Graphics#1433.7503.750
Interpretation of the Secondary Theme#2263.3133.313
Gameplay#2452.5942.594
Overall#2452.9622.962
Soundtrack/SFX#3271.2811.281

Ranked from 32 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game meet GBJam's theme?
Set in a forest/witches, some silly/spooky art later in the game.

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Comments

Submitted

That was fun! The mechanics are competent, the art is proficient, and the character design and writing are quite charming. Good work!

Submitted

Cute character design! And it's nice to finally see a big font in a gameboy game!

Solid concept, congrats!

Submitted

Really neat! The artwork was great and the core concept is solid if a bit repetitive with mashing search a lot. The dialogue also seemed to go a bit fast and took me a bit to realize how to turn in quests, but outside of that it was fun and charming. The dialogue between the characters is really good too.

Developer(+1)

thank you for giving it a try! definitely some things I can improve to make it less confusing / more fluid  and maybe  more rewarding / less repetitive. thank you for the suggestions!

Submitted

I hope she actually gets her vacation, the neighbour seems crazy. Well done with the art style and animations!

Developer

Thank you for the kind words and for playing!

Submitted

I really appreciated the art style here! +1 for the hardware compatibility too. Good Job! :D

Developer

thank you for taking a look!

Submitted

So cool this was made with GBDK!! I only have experience with ZGB  so far and I can appreciate the extra work that would be needed without an engine. I really love the art and animated characters! The story is funny too.  Great work!

Developer(+1)

yay thank you for checking it out! :)

Submitted

It was a very nice, small game, and the art is great. Gameboy soul is off the charts since it's running on original hardware, too.

I didn't really have an issue where I was confused by the locations, but that may be because where you are is somewhat inconsequential... You can "solve" the game rather quickly, with no downsides to mass farming of resources before each quest. Then it becomes a matter of navigating in and out of menus. I wonder if that could've been a bit different with, say, fail states as skeletons pop up if you're at the graveyard at the wrong time, fail states involving the witch waiting for too long on your cure... think each search action consuming 1 unit of time, and when you run out you end up in a fail state. 

Still a very pleasant little adventure with a nice little story, felt like an adventure game of old. Great work.

Developer(+1)

nice ideas wit the fail states! I figured it would also be a good to change Elsie's expression in the menu to something scared (also fits the spooky vibe) like "oh maybe I shouldn't be here! eek!). yea the mass farming (even building potions before the  respective quest starts) never really got polished. I also originally build a "wait" menu option to slow the game down a bit and potentially add more cutscenes/content (and to add a 1 unit of stamina back). yea, that got cut too! thank you for checking it out and leaving your ideas! :)

Submitted

The story was funny and cute! The art is quite charming! (I looked at your unused assets too; those are cute!)

And it's really cool that you really got it working on a GameBoy cartridge!

I really enjoyed playing it! Great work! (And in the alternate universe where you did get to add sound in, I bet it would have been even more amazing!)

Developer(+1)

wonderful! thank you for checking both the game and the post out! I had a bunch of fun making it and my main goal was to do more of the "flashy" animation work . I'm glad it can be appreciated :)

Submitted(+1)

I can’t believe you used GBDK for this gamejam, that’s so cool! This is the first game I’ve seen run on hardware without using GBStudio!

Developer

The only other non-gb-studio game I've found (so far) is this one: https://shadowsora211.itch.io/cats-and-spooks  I think it is built on the ZGB framework  (which I ~think is some common state management on top of gbdk). thank you for taking a look!

Submitted

Thank you for sharing :D

Submitted(+2)

https://bownly.itch.io/double-dyad

I found another one!

Submitted

Nice, pretty cute, I love it :)

Developer(+1)

thank you for the kind words and for checking it out! :)

Submitted

Great interactions with the story! I missed sound a bit, would be great addition!
Cute and fun work, nice one.

Developer

thank you for taking a look!  I'll try my best to get some audio working for the next jam!

Submitted

Funny, like an interactive novel. Where is the sound? :-(

Developer

unfortunately, I never got around to it. i had too many problems with other parts of my code/tooling. I'll try to get something working next jam, at least menu sfx or something small. thank you for taking a look!

Submitted

Good job on this entry.  The characters and animations look great, and I appreciate the large sprites & text.  Some of the interactions with the witch were pretty funny.   I did have to retry quite a few times, because there are some menus that I kept getting stuck in and couldn't seem to get out of.   I basically avoided checking quests, looking in my bag, or crafting when I didn't have enough ingredients.  Overall nice work.  Very cool to see that it runs on an actual Game Boy, too!

Developer(+1)

agreed on the confusing menus. as all three locations "look" the same, it is impossible to tell which one you are in! well, thank you for at least taking a look! I originally built an exclamation point sprite that I was going to place next to the menu sprites as a "guide" on what to click next. perhaps I should have seen that one through to completion...

Submitted

I liked the game, pretty cute !

Developer

thank you for playing!

Submitted

After dealing with thatI definitely think Elsie deserves another vacation. Great work, the dialogue was super cute!

Developer

thank you for trying out! maybe not as polished as yours but I'm glad it was still enjoyable!

Submitted

Very cute! The gameplay is simple but I enjoyed learning and making different potions, and I liked Elsie's little animations.

Developer

thank you for playing!