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Aztec's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #5 | 4.641 | 4.641 |
| Overall | #11 | 4.353 | 4.353 |
| Audio | #15 | 4.185 | 4.185 |
| Authenticity (use of resolution) | #35 | 4.728 | 4.728 |
| Gameplay | #43 | 3.859 | 3.859 |
Ranked from 92 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you work in a team?
2 Members, @SlainteES handing gfx code and some SFX and @vavmusicmagic who worked in the music tracks and SFX as well. It was fun, but stressful... this was a very ambitiuous project.
Was the resolution a challenge?
Animating fluently in a "realistic" way a sprite of 10x13 proved a big challenge, but the extra time and effort put into it paid off... Guatemoc is a pleasure to control and watch while he traverses the temple
What did you learn?
From the coding perspective the learnings are Platformers are incredibly harder than expected (and the big refactor required by this code is proof of it), from the music/sfx perspective... first time for @vavmusicmagic on pico8 sound so it was a brand new experience.
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Comments
This was a fun entry! I like how the playable area isn't too big, so any backtracking is very small. I wish those mirrors at least saved a checkpoint automatically when you pass it, for death is easy to come by and means a restart. Thankfully it was short enough to not be any major issue and I just learned use every mirror I came by, even after a respawn. I love the graphics btw, very readable and pretty to look at! Very well done!
Thnx for playing :) I’ve had a few complains on the obsidian mirrors… will look into readjusting the logic / use cases for them… I hoped the current behaviour made things mor challenging but looks like it ended just being a bit frustrating, so time to redesign that!
The palette choice and the brilliant music give this a really atmospheric feel, I love it. The movement of the character feels really good, the lack of momentum and the pause when you land give it a nice weighty feel, a refreshing change from a lot of platformers that have a similar feel. The whole thing reminds of cinematic platformers like Flashback. Love it. :)
Thnx for playing and the feedback… Still quite a few things to polish and fix (particularly ladders… I really do hate them XD) But 2 weeks give you just so much time… post-jam there’s a lot of things to change, fix and improve.
thanks for the kind words! glad you enjoyed the game!
Absolutely incredible entry - well done!
Thank you for playing! Glad you liked it!
Love the visuals and the music, it felt smooth to explore the world and the puzzles were really well made!
Hey, thank you for playing! Glad you liked the game
thanks very much, first time making pico 8 music/sfx so it’s reassuring to get some positive feedback, glad you enjoyed it
Impressive animations given the constraints! I liked how heavy the character feels and how the jumps are only about timing, though it took me some time to get used to it. I didn't realize you could just wait at checkpoints to get your mirror back, I thought you had to go to the next checkpoint to get it back which made the game a bit more challenging :)
I also found a bug where I got stuck inside walls while climbing a ladder, I couldn't find a way to get back to the previous checkpoint and had to restart the game.
woops, looks like collisions pushed you all way through the walls until a “spot” without colliding tiles… could be there’s some bbox issues when checkig at some points (and i know top of a ladder is one of those messy/buggy points). The Mirrors take a few seconds to “recharge” after being activated (to prevent easy HP refilling, a bit more time after a full respawn. The intention was to increase the challenge, but yep, some patience does the trick.
Thank you for playing and sorry for the nasty bug that got you “walled”
Cool game. Fun to explore the world. I love the main character animations!
Thank you for playing!
Awesome aesthetic, I like the controls and animations as well. Was a bit challenging to figure out which button starts the game at first, since the graphic looks like an O but it's Z actually.
Thnx for playing… It’s pico 8 standard controls… Should be a controller icon with info outside the playing area in the bottom right…
Just added controls information to the page to make sure nobody else has a similar issue, thnx for reporting this problem
Real great game! The level design is pretty cool and the art-style is fantastic :D Have to reactivate the checkpoint after every death is a bit frustrating, I forgot it twice (one of this times almost in the end hahahaha) but the gameplay is so fluid that replay it isn't a problem at all :D
Thank you for playing and the comments. The checkpoint reactivation was a late decision, but I wanted things to be a bit more challenging… Like the mirror power beinig drained recalling your soul from death leaving it useless for a bit.
With very fluid animations, the game reminded me of the older prince of persia but smoother. The art is stunning and the music is great. I like the way the puzzles are laid out, and how everything was very intuitive despite tutorials being present.
One thing I'd change about the checkpoint system is that it could automatically refresh after dying. I thought that was the case until I died twice to a lava pit and got back to the main menu, then I figured out that I had to wait a little bit before reactivating the checkpoint to ensure I wouldn't game over.
I like how the map isn't a straight line, makes it really fun to explore. Overall extremely solid entry, super polished. Great job!
Thank you for playing and glad you liked the exploratory approach to the game. Seeing a few comments on how frustrating the reactivation time of checkpoints is… will need to think about it. The idea behind them was of limited power needing to refill, particularly for the healing part… but maybe respawn can be considered differently.
An excellent PICO-8 game that really pushes the console’s limits.
Thank you for playing! not that it goes as far as poom or other big titles there (yet…) but I think it breaks a mould on what a pico8 game expectation sets out.
Absolutely wonderful - the art is superb, with a fantastic tileset and phenomenal animation for the player character. Just a joy to watch!
Music and sfx are perfect, and really fit the tone.
The world feels huge, and is great fun to explore. Having a degree of choice in where to look next felt great :)
Gameplay is challenging, mastering control of momentum proved essential and led to a very satisfying feeling when I was able to pull of a tricky section. The gaps between checkpoints work really well, forcing you to play well consistently for an extended section. That said, I'd love an alternate game mode with unlimited restarts from the last checkpoint - it's definitely a little tricky for me!
Fantastic game all around, I love how far you've been able to push the limits of PICO-8 :)
Thank you for playing! Glad you enjoyed the experience… Checkpoint system will need a rebalance considering all I am reading about it. Post-jam to-do list is growing ;) Anyway you are right on somethng: mastering movement is key.
The character animation might be the star of the show but the enviornments have a very appealing look to them too! I will say having a jump with no air-control can be used with intentionality to create interesting challenges (and often is here), although expecting the player to do it onto a single tile, from a single tile, into a section with only one checkpoint (in a game where dying twice before activating a different checkpoint results in going back to the start of the game) can be a bit mean. Aside from that the gameplay feels spot on to the vibe and type of game you're trying to capture.
Thnx for playing and the feedback. Note taken… I need to balance a bit better jumping ;) for checkpoints… After respawn those take a few seconds to recharge before reactivation is enabled… So maybe some patience could pay off ;)
Given the system you wrote this in, color me very impressed. This is fun and fluid to play. Any minor nitpicks I might toss have already been addressed below. As you say, I really think you pulled off the animation! Excellent all around.
Thnx for playing and the feedback. It doesn’t look your avg pico game ;) let’s see if I can push the limits further post-jam
It really doesn't - excellent work. I'll totally check back post jam!
the art is great, i coudnt really connect with the movment of the character, the timing and collison feels off, i like the level desgin but the movement just really affected my exprience
Thnx for playing and the feedback… Any hints on what didn’t click in with the movement for you? It’s good to hear feedback and look for improvement opportunities
mmm is hard to say because i havent play prince of persia and i feel that where the style of plataforming is coming from , i would say that i hit things that i feel like i should be getting over like if there was a invisible wall that made the object bigger and the jump never lands where i think is going to land, but it could be just me that im not use to this type of jump
Collision wise maybe the BBox for the character is a bit wide (a rect) considering he’s a “stick man”, so probably I will try to fine tune it as it might feel a bit odd stopping at an arms length… in the other hand this makes platforming easier as you can really extend a bit out of a platform before dropping. I’ll need to balance things out…
Jump is lacking air control and is a based on button-press time, can be tricky to master and feels so unnatural against your usual platforming where you can fully adjust trajectory mid-flight that I totally understand this might not be the cup of tea for every player, maybe I can consider optional settings you can configure for several aspects of the gameplay…
Thnx for the feedback
Congrats! I know how much you worked on this and it turned out really well! Love the theme and how it goes through the entire game. A gif difficult here and there, but that can be easily ironed out. Good job!
Thank you Johan… it was a story of parallel games XD we even ended pairing up the same musician! I pushed a lot of hours into the gfx particularly so ended up not having that much time to get the polishing I would have liked for it, but I don’t think there’s anything too bad ;)
Great visuals and sounds.
Landing after a jump where no damage was taken felt really long relative to the speed the character moves (felt like a split between Prince of Persia and a faster paced platformer).
I was hoping to get to more interesting game mechanics sooner over a slow boil (given that it’s a jam setting).
Thank you for playing it… Seems that the landing is ruffling some feathers around, and probably needs some fine tunning (like keeping part of the speed, or a roll landing to keep moving). Sadly I had not the time or the space in the cart to expand mechanics, but I will be working on a post-jam version see if I can fit a few more things and improve the engine overall.
Definitely one of my favorite entries. Sprites, music, all really well done, the characters animations are *chefs kiss*
The movement was awesome, felt like prince of persia or flashback or something, really deliberate and requiring you to really consider how you want to move and not just sprint around jumping.
The game is HARD, specifically the precision jumping on the pillars over the spikes.
Thank you for the nice comments. I put a lot of time into those sprites :) Really glad you liked the game and felt the restrictive movement mechanics to be fitting, I think I hit the right spot there when you copare the feeling to PoP which was one of the references I had in mind when working this out. The pillars, yes, those are the trickiest thing there … on the spikes and articularly on the lava pits :P
I died because of fireballs. 😥🤭
The most difficult for me was to jump accordingly those obstacles:
But I could get it after a few tries. I thought the move limitation was annoying at first, but once I got I thought it fits very well in fact.
Lovely entry. Amazing art & audio. Loved everything from it! <3
Thank you! The intention of the restrictive move mechanics was to escame a “mario style” platforming experince… I wanted it to feel like a deadly run through unexplored ruins, with danger lurking around and human-like abilities (even though jump is far over a normal-human campacity :P) Glad you liked it… once you get used to the jump sensibiilty it’s not that hard, but still harder than with full air-control during the jump.
Glad you enjoyed playing it!
I do understand why you wanted to escame that "mario style" and honestly I think you did well!
Your game got me nostalgic and makes me remember how much fun I had playing Prince of Persia on DOS for some reasons.. Probably because of overall mechanics and these good restrictive moves.
I'm repeating myself but again, really good job here! 😅
I really enjoyed the mechanics that pushed this more towards a slower, more deliberate platforming experience. I found some of these mechanics a bit clunky at first compared to modern platformers which give you a bit more freedom of movement, but these limitations really make the game feel deadly and unique. Music and art were really well done and fit the game well.
Thank you for playing and the comments. The goal was not a platformer speedrunner, but a dangerous exploratory and puzzle experience… too bad 2 weeks are not enough time to get that to the level I’d wished for, but I think this is a good enough result for the time invested.
Well i think you nailed it, it's got great atmosphere and mechanics!
A stunning work. Everything is done simply great.
Thank you, glad you liked it!