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Haunted Castle's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Soundtrack/SFX | #37 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Graphics | #42 | 4.400 | 4.400 |
| Interpretation of the Secondary Theme | #61 | 4.200 | 4.200 |
| Overall | #64 | 3.853 | 3.853 |
| Gameboy Soul | #105 | 3.867 | 3.867 |
| Gameplay | #208 | 2.800 | 2.800 |
Ranked from 15 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?
Using 4 colors corresponding to the original Game Boy screen, 8-bit audio, and simple controls limited to the number of buttons on the GB, with nostalgic visuals and an incredible soundtrack, this is a concept game that deserves to be experienced.
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Comments
This one was neat, really creative idea that each room has two sides and you go into combat when you swap! Music was good and tilework looked great. Only nitpick is the battle system is EXTREMELY slow, it would've really benefited from less delay between each attack.
Also I'm curious, if this wasn't using a game engine what was it made in? Some kind of game framework like SDL, SFML, allegro? Or something more raw than that?
Hello! Initially, I had planned to use a simple OpenGL context with GLFW, but due to time constraints, I decided to use raylib. It's a very straightforward framework with less boilerplate than SDL. Even though it was my first time using it, it was quite easy to get started and have graphics drawn on the screen.
For physics, I used Box2D, which ended up being more complex and with less favorable results, to be honest. We had some plans that justified a more robust physics engine, but we ended up not using it.
I implemented a system that generates the level 100% based on files from Tiled, including enemy definitions, item positions, interactions, and dialogue—all through Tiled, making life easier for the artist, who didn't need to look at code to develop the level. The system basically parses the exported .json from Tiled and follows some rules to define the entities' behavior.
No game engine? Wow... You folks are brave lol
And it's an ambitous project at that!
Just a thing... The text is a bit hard to read... Maybe make a larger font next time
I agree about the font. When I designed it, it seemed fine until we started writing the game phrases. When we realized it wasn’t very legible, it was too late to make corrections before publishing. Thank you for playing.
Great great job! A very fun game. Maybe the combat could be improved, its a bit "boring". There isn't a reason to use the light attack.
We agree. We had more advanced plans for the combat, but we saw that it would not be possible to implement everything we wanted in time, so we stuck with the basics. We have plans to continue the project and make the necessary improvements. Thank you for playing.
Very fun entry!
I really like the idea of the "reveal spell" being used to trigger turn-based battles in rooms with ghosts. Very unique design.
The combat itself is a bit on the basic side. I feel like the addition of a "light attack" at all feels superfluous. Maybe, since you get to position yourself in relation to the ghosts before combat starts, some spells could take that positioning into account? Something like a targeted heavy attack, and a weaker light attack that affects a small radius around the enemy. Enabling the player to "end" the reveal spell early to reposition could also make for some cool strategic decisions.
As for the aesthetics, this looks and sounds really good! It feels like a complete package in that front, and that's hard to achieve in the span of a jam.
Good work here. Keep it up!
Thank you for playing it. Regarding the combat, we initially had other plans for it, but we made a basic construction to ensure that at least it was in the game.
The idea about the position of the ghosts when revealing them as a strategic part for the effectiveness of the attacks is indeed a good one.
It is a fact that the combat really needs more work, but it was what we managed to do within the time.
That was cool! The art is proficient and the character designs are charming; I especially like the ghosts! The soundtrack is also great; it fits the gothic atmosphere and setting.
The mechanics are competent, but awkward and poorly balanced. I agree with everything Nikoichu said below regarding that.
The audio balance is a bit off; the sound effects are much louder than the music.
Whenever I used the Reveal, the main screen rapidly flashed inverted colors a few times in less than half a second. Is that supposed to happen, or is it a bug? If it isn't a bug, it warrants a flashing lights warning. (It also breaks the four color restriction, but that's less important than the flashing lights.)
All-in-all, good work! Congratulations on making the game from scratch!
Thank you for the feedback! The flash should indeed occur at the moment the revelation magic is used for a few frames. But we hadn't noticed that the shader responsible for it wasn't running across the entire screen. The idea of using a simple shader that inverts the colors was precisely to avoid violating the color rules, but we ended up missing that.
Thank you for the feedback. Especially regarding the combat part, we wanted to make something more complex, but we couldn’t manage it with the free time we had during the week. To make things better, since we decided to suffer by making the game without a game engine, it was hard to deal with some inconsistencies within the time frame, hahaha.
It was supposed to be a quick flicker. As for the HUD, it wasn’t intentional for it not to change color. The idea was for everything to be inverted in color.
We intend to keep working on the project later, refactor all the code, fix all the errors, and improve the combat by implementing everything we originally planned.
Thank you for playing it.
This one is oozing with Gameboy soul! Looks and sounds great, fantastic work :)
Thank you. We still have a lot to do to get the game to match what we envisioned in the GDD, but we’re glad you enjoyed it.
I have to say, the graphics and sound design are outstanding! You really captured that gameboy feel, and the little touches like the screen transitions only add to that feel. And you did this without using a game engine? Damn, that's masochistic! But impressive.
That being said, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Movement is clunky (I guess you recreated that aspect of GB well huh), because the player collision shape is a CHONK. Barely fits in doorways. Like, lose some weight, miss witch. That wouldn't be so bad if not for the pushing puzzles. It's still not clear to me how exactly it is supposed to work. I thought it was something like sokoban, but it's not. You can push blocks halfway, but only sometimes, other times the blocks don't move at all no matter what you do. There is no tutorial to teach you the rules of the block-pushing, so we're left in the dark.
The combat is really flat. Light attack has no reason to be used ever, since it only deals 1 damage for 1 mana, while heavy attack deals 2 damage for 2 mana, not wasting an additional turn. Defend completely negates damage for 2 turns, so if you just spam defend->heavy attack over and over, you can win any fight without taking damage. This is really boring however, because you have to wait for your mana to slowly regenerate every 3 attacks, and enemies have 10+ HP. So it's a slog. You can cheese the mana regen phases by just using reveal at the enterance doorway of the room with the ghosts, so the door that spawns to block your escape keeps the ghosts away from you.
Potions don't help either. Mana potions are actually harmful, because gameplay-wise you want your mana to run out, because if you cast a heavy attack at 2 mana, the enemies don't get to retaliate.
Overall, the gameplay loop and especially the combat could use a heavy rework.
As a piece of art however, this truly could have been one of the GB games back in the day. It's gorgeous. <3
I wonder what you could have made if you had used a game engine?
We appreciate your feedback. It was indeed a challenge to make it without a game engine with the little time we have during the week. We are aware of the issues you mentioned.
In fact, the combat was supposed to be more complex, but we had to simplify it. We noticed it would require more work as we did the tests, but for the Jam’s time, we decided to leave it for later. In the GDD, we have described a more advanced evolution of combat with new abilities, skills, and actions more or less effective against certain types of ghosts. I hope we can improve this later.
The block problem, believe me, it irritates us too, lol. They were supposed to work like the movable blocks in Link’s Awakening for GB. Basically, some blocks are pushable and others are not (visual difference between the blocks, the ones that look less old are the ones you can push), but there is a lot of inconsistency between the pixels of the colliders. This is one of the reasons why the blocks sometimes get stuck on the way.
About the art, thank you very much for the compliment, I never did so much pixel art in such a short time haha.
I'd be really interested to see where you take the game post-jam. Given that it was made without an engine, it's quite the achievement already. You really got a taste of what gamedev was back then, since I don't think there were any commercial engines around GB's time :D
You could go for a more puzzle-y route for combat - to defeat enemies with limited resources by exploiting their weaknesses and such. Something like Desktop Dungeons' puzzle levels if you know that game.
Good luck with your project! <3