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Golden Star Sheriff's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Visuals | #12 | 4.651 | 4.651 |
| Authenticity (use of resolution restriction) | #14 | 4.860 | 4.860 |
| Overall | #25 | 4.221 | 4.221 |
| Gameplay | #52 | 3.814 | 3.814 |
| Audio | #96 | 3.558 | 3.558 |
Ranked from 43 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you work in a team?
One man Orchestra ;)
It's just more than fun, but can be quite stressful in solo mode,, particularly in the areas you don't master that well (music in my case)
Was the resolution a challenge?
Low resolutions are my happy place... takes alot of effort to put up quality sprites but in the end there's just not so many pixels you can use at a single sprite so bring me more 64x64 goodness!
What did you learn?
I got some decent results with the music tracker for the title-screen theme, which is quite a new situation... normally I am terrible with music trackers (even though I can play a few instruments... I am more in the analogic world for music I guess). It was also quite intensive in terms of taking rust out of my joints regarding Pico8 coding.
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Comments
I thought that this game was pretty fun. I liked the old western theme, it felt like one of those shooting gallery games you play for a couple quarters. I played on controller and my only complaint was that the sensitivity was too high.
Thnx for playing, true that targeting speed needs to be lowered (fix ready to deploy post-voting along with some others)
Great game, Slainte!
Thnx for playing!
Fun game! I always liked this genre and the game played great.
Thnx for playing!
This very well could be the best game I've played in the jam. I'm tied between this one and Golf Sunday. It is a flawless execution of the concept, and it fits so nicely into the 64x64 constraint.
The creator recommends you play with a game controller, and I agree. The experience is much better with one.
This is nitpicking, but I wish there were more of a strategy to avoiding enemy fire. I never quite figured out that part. The projectiles fly sideways, which makes it hard to avoid them if you don't have much room to move on the opposite side. If two bad guys fire at you from the left and the right, you're pretty much screwed and just have to take the hit.
I settled on trying to trap the enemies but I couldn't avoid enough damage to not die eventually.
Big words here! Thnx for playing and glad you had a good experience with the game. About evading bullets: Bullet collision in the case of the player happens around the area where the hit-hinting shows up so you will be safe if you collide with them far from that point, the strategy would be roll out of the impact point (if the bullets are close) or just move out of the way. Maybe enemies should not come that far down to prevent those almost horizontal firing lines. A similar thing happens with the enemies, bullets only impact around the area the crosshair/reticle was originally when you fired them.
A mechanic I left out was shooting enemy bullets, I might consider bringing that in though probably difficulty will drop a bit in this case.
This really hits that sweet spot of feeling like a lost old game that was just discovered or something, I feel like you and I had a similar approach to making a small retro-style game. Very nice pixel art, just hits the nail on the head. I wish the music from the title screen played through the whole time! Anyway you should be proud, this is an excellent entry.
Hey, thnx for playing! There’s an unfinished couple of tracks waiting for completing for in-game background and travelling doctor jingle… Music is not my best area, i am painfully slow putting up music that sounds good. I can do it, but it takes a lot in terms of dedication. Glad you liked it, I tried the gfx style to look as high res as I could ;) I’ll be posting updates post-jam to give it the final touches on this version, and see if I can come up to a full set of levels and all later.
Awesome title music and overall, great work on the art and gameplay! Anything I would've mentioned I think the other comments have already taken care of, however I do want to echo my issue with the controls. If I could aim with the mouse and move with WASD, then I would enjoy it a lot more. Excellent work though!
Thnx for playing it! I know that a lot of games that imply targeting use a mouse these days, but the decision to not use it is intentional… with that control scheme this would be a totally different game and would not be aligned to the original idea inspired by old Arcade and SNES classics. Maybe I can try add an option later on and test it, but my initial feeling is that the gameplay experience won’t be that challenging… I guess the control scheme would be mouse for targetting and firing (1 btn) and A-D for left right and potentially S+A/D for rolling. Leaves some extra controls for more actions (W and combinations) but not sure I’d like the game behaving like this. Thnx for the suggestions though, sometimes you need to hear the users ;)
I remember see this in the discord. The pixel work is amazing and nice use of the resolution. Not much to say on the sfx. This is properly more of a personal problem but it would be interesting to see this controlled with a mouse and wsad keys using 2 player controllers.
Thnx for playing… I see many of you indicating this game screams “MOUSE” out and loud… I need to really think about it as that control scheme change moves it into a totally different game.
Wow! This game is great!
The gameplay is interesting! Audio and visuals are great!
Thnx for playing! Seems the effort paid off… you guys seem to be liking it which is great!
I've been looking forward to playing this one after watching your progress in Discord, and you did not disappoint! It looks great!
I played it on both Keyboard and Gamepad. The keyboard felt overly sensitive, making it difficult to play. The gamepad was a lot easier, but it still felt like I had to sweep across a spot to hit my targets mainly because I couldn't be as precise as I wanted to. I often felt like the reticle was never where I really wanted to aim.
There were also some sorting issues with the bandits. Some bandits appeared in front of another bandit when they should have been behind them. Nothing major, but it did add to the aim precision issues I felt.
Other than that, the game's fun! The gameplay is nicely balanced between dodging, shooting, and recovering. It's tough but fair. And the bosses are a nice escalation in challenge. Very retro!
Great job! Keep up the awesome work!
Hey, thnx for playing! As you say there’s a few issues… first the crosshair cannot hit every pixel as it moves at more than 1px speed, but lowering that made it really painful to try to aim to something that was far away on the limited resolution, I plan to add some targetting speed settings post-jam to tune it up/down a bit so everyone can find a comfortable balance… then the Z sorting, agreed on that as well… in some occasions (especially when bandits cross paths on the same Z, wich is actually Y-sorting) there’s sometimes issues on the multi-layered sprite drawing order… I need to find where the bug is, probably something silly like applying sorting before moving or something just as idiotic. I did not notice before submitting but it’s in my “wanted” board with high bounty.
I think the speed is fine, it's more the precision.
Something I use to encounter in old gun-con games on PSX (when you didn't have the Gun-con), or arcade shooters ported to PC, was an additional button to control the speed, kind of like a run button. Some games let the reticle move faster when you pressed it, and others would let you slow down and be more precise when you needed it. I don't know the specifics of your game, but one of those could be a better-balancing alternative.
Hope that's helpful in some way!
Main issue is the limited action buttons available on pico (basically 4xdirections + 2xaction). You can salvage some Player2 controls that are somewhat near enough the rest to make it reasonable to use them but not a big fan of these Frankenstein configs. I will try to tune speed for a start and allow personalization for it by the player, let’s see if this can leverage or at least mitigate the issue enough. Thnx for the suggestion anyway!
Ah, fair enough. For what it is, it's still very playable. So no big deal. Best of luck!
As I said… idiotic bug… one of the branches of execution was not updating Z at all… Fix ready for post-jam update
Woooo! I was a fan of this game since the first time I saw the art posting on the discord server. I absolutely love the western setting and your pixel art is just amazing. The little cowboys look so good and I love the main character poncho. I do find the game a little difficult but that just adds to the retro feel. You nailed hit it out of the park on this one!!!!
Thank you for playing! Pixel art in low resolutions is something I love doing, tried my best to make the game looked the best I could muster on 64x64, that the resolution was kind of forgotten and assumed as part of the style and not as a restriction. The game effectiveness lies on a thin balance btwn moving constantly, firing (with probably low precision most of the time), using wisely your time firing from a safe spot and timing your usage of power-ups… in the end a tight spot hard to reach ;) but I think that’s what makes it appealing for another try and keeps the challenge burning.
The gunplay and precision dodging works really well. You have to balance your time shooting and rolling to avoid the incoming volleys of fire. Once I got the hang of quickly rolling out of gunfire, I was able to clear out waves of the standard enemy much more effectively. I love the power up for rate of fire, that boost of power feels great.
Thnx for playing! Yep, the game balance was hard to gauge but I had a clear idea you needed to keep constantly mooving and had to make the best of the time on a safe spot using free-aim mode. Both power-ups are quite a boost… large caliber increases the hit area and damage of bullets, rapid firing increases fire cadence and bullet speed. And the best thing is both can be stacked! I hope the duration of the power-ups feels good, I was worried it felt too short or (worse…) too long.
I had been watching this game take form on Twitter and am happy to be able to play it now~ It's very fun and captures the feeling of a 'Wild Guns de-make' with tight controls and consistent action! If you were to expand the idea, it might be nice to have different locations and times of day (that is, different setpieces in the close background, and different colors used for the far background). But for this entry, great work!
Hey, thnx for trying it and for keeping an eye on the twitter dev-log. It is great you feel the Wild Guns aura while playing. The plan was having something like 5-6 different settings with medium length levels, more enemy and boss variety, boss special attacks, civilians you should not shoot, etc. But yeah, that was overscoping by the book. A few days from the deadline only a potentially solid first level could have made it so I changed directions (thnx to the suggestions from early testers, thank you guys!) to go into a “wave based” game for the jam. That brought some changes that I think ended up adding more to the game, like the travelling doctor, and kept other things out, but the plan is post-jam coming back to the original idea and maybe keep a wave mode as well.
Your games always look great and this isn't an exception! I didn't make it to the end boss, but once I get a controller set up I'll be returning to this game.
Thank you for playing it and for your comment on the visual aspect of my little projects. I just keep trying my best so those few pixels look the best I can manage within the limitations. I hope the experience though was fun (I guess it was, otherwise you’d not be returning to the game…)
I'm so bad at leaving comments, haha. I did enjoy playing the game! There's so much to like about the experience. I do definitely agree with your note that using a controller is ideal for the game's control scheme. It just feels better! And having the dodge roll is invaluable and feels so smooth. A+ execution all around, I am impressed.
Don’t worry about your commenting skills, they’re good ;) The main mental click you need to do is your focus is the crosshair, not the character himself… though you must keep an eye on keeping him out of bullet hit markers. I need to fix a few bugs (the Z-sorting one for once…) but overall the result is quite decent and seems you guys are having fun while playing it which is the most important thing of it all.
Cool game was looking forward to playing it and it did not disappoint . Just had t get use to the feel of the controls.
Thnx for playing it! I need to really revisit controls and refine targeting speed post jam. After voting time I will take some days to go through the feedback received and some of the missing things.
The game has “wild guns” feel, title-screen theme is top notch, great work!
Thnx for playing! Good it keeps the Wild Guns spirit, that was the main inspiration ;)
Really excellent use of foreground vs background. I like how much you managed to cram into the small resolution, the different enemies, and the wagon that rides by. It was all great!
Thnx for trying it, and thnx for the praise! I guess I did not as good a job as your incredibly lively city ;) but I think it fits the theme and the purpose.
Fantastic work on the pixel art here, very well done!
Thnx! It was a lot of work but quite happy with the results
Excellent job on the pixel art of this one, Carlos! Minor nitpick: I would constraint the cursor from going to the lower part of the screen. Other than that, pretty solid entry overall, man! Cheers!
Thnx! About the boundaries… I must have lost it and missed the break, the feature for movement boundaries for the crosshair is there… Will fix it post-jam
Nice game! Controls are a bit weird, it's the first time i play this kind of 2D shooter. But i had a lot of fun playing it! My highscore is wave 8.
Thnx for playing! I will refine movement post-jam as there’s quite some feedback about it. Glad you had fun with it
Worth playing it over and over again!👍
Simple, action-packed gameplay, a bit hard at first but really addicting once you master it. The graphics are also neat and really work for the low-rez style.
One thing that needs to be worked on though is the sound: the gunshots are a bit too loud, and, as a suggestion, some sounds are needed either to aid the player (game feedback) or add to the atmosphere (for the carriages, for example).
Gonna play it again now!
Yes… sound came late to the jam party XD and it is also my weakest area. The plan (post-jam) is having a background track while in game and the travelling doctor to have his own tune to announce it’s coming. Seems you really are having a lot of fun with it ;)