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How does your game meet GBJam's theme?
It's a real Game Boy game (made with GB Studio) inspired by Japanese horror.
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This is the second nearly flawless and super authentic GB Studio Castlevania game from this jam I've thus far played. How do you guys even do it?
First off, yes. The gameplay is very, very close to being perfect. Had this been released back then, and it does feel like it could've been, it would've been considered a feature complete, sleeper hit import. Considering that this is a jam game: wow. This is in between Castlevania Adventure and Castlevania Adventure 2 in terms of gameplay content - that's nuts! The main difference between both is regarding the subweapons, which 2 had and 1 didn't.
Which brings us to yes, the shuriken. The shuriken is a very functional throwing knife at specific points in the game, but its overall usefulness is a bit limited. For example, at least in my experience you will want to throw them on them skelly youkai liberally, but not on the final boss, you want to try for a double whip when he lands. Which is just fine, it's just that the game gives you a lot of them and you don't really use them too often. Bit of a shame, I do wish there were more situations that called for them.
Furthermore on the gameplay front, there's just some really, really slight hitbox issues with the umbrella, you can whiff quite a bit against it. Barely worth mentioning, however. Also barely worth mentioning is that there are some slight timing improvements that could be made. Such as the final boss lingering on the floor just slightly longer so you can get the double whip on 'im, the dragons that pop out of the pipes taking some extra frames to fire or you being able to whip their fireballs, that kind of thing. I mention it because this being such an amazing, basically feature complete GB game I do believe that it's very worth continuing, patching, something like that.
The presentation is really damn good. I really appreciate the eye for detail. The boss health bar charging up, the varieties of youkai, the very retro artstyle. Musically, it's really damn good as well - I especially like the half-step progression (?) in a section of the stage 1 theme, it rocks! The entire package has such a Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon vibe to it, I was smiling the entire way because I love that game.
Just beautifully done.
2nd Castlevania clone you played this Jam? There's another one?!?! I should check it out!!
And yeah, I've actually already started working on a colour version of this with some improvements, just activating colour mode alone already eliminated the lag lol (Blessed GBC doubled clock speed)
I'm thinking perhaps a difficulty setting, maybe rework some boss patterns a bit, it's a bit difficult to get melee attacks working on GB Studio cuz projectiles are finicky, and they're the only good way of doing hitboxes of any kind... But I'll see if there's anything I can do to improve that too.
Thank you very much!
Yeah, it's kinda like Kid Dracula. Really enjoyed it https://cobaltaoi.itch.io/the-boy-and-the-mysterious-amulets
A GBC version sounds really interesting, looking forward to it. Regarding difficulty I think you could perhaps do what Bloodstained did, and have a sort of classicvania mode difficulty. If you fall into a pit or spikes you now lose a life, there's knockback, etc.
As for the hitboxes they're pretty fine anyway, you'd only want some minor QoL adjustments here and there.
Also, no problem and good luck with the post-jam version!
One of the best games here so far
Thank you very much!
Definitely, it is one of the games made. Congratulations.