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Twilight Expedition - Public Alpha Playtest's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Sensory | #13 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
Enjoyment | #17 | 2.222 | 2.222 |
Overall | #18 | 2.194 | 2.194 |
Execution | #19 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
Metroidvania | #20 | 1.889 | 1.889 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
GB Studio
Team/Developer
Cormorant42
External assets
Art assets from GibbonsGL, Balloon Cart, Jared C Hansen, and Gavinandpiano
Prizes eligibility
Idk
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Comments
I loved the gameboy color aesthetic and the music was great. Despite the issues already mentioned below, it’s been an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately, I couldn’t continue due to a bug when transitioning between rooms. If you switch items mid-transition in rooms where rocks block the path, you can get stuck. I attach a video to show it:
Despite that, I’ve loved the overall atmosphere of the game. The characters have their charm, and I also love that you can examine all the monuments and crypts. I’ll try to finish it again soon. Great work!
Ah, bugger. I believe what's happening is that the item-switch script interrupts the script which is supposed to reset the doors. Thanks for the bug report!
I thought that the exp system was clever as a way to manage all resources and tie into combat + exploration
I got all the way through temple and blew up wall to get to man and the way closed behind me then I died to go back to checkpoint before and was softlocked in respawn room. I stopped after that because it took me a while to get there and would have had to restart
I got all the ankhs but when I died it would reset how many I had collected to 1 (I think because save points could only be used once)
because of this the combat was a bit brutal as I was permanently 2 hit
I also couldnt read any of the tablets? I think that the lore reason is that the man is the only one who could read them but why are they everywhere (I prob missed something)
This isnt really a metroidvania and checking the page you submitted it to the game boy jam as well so it feels like an afterthought to submit here
Well, see, that's the thing. It was originally planned for this game jam, submitting it to the other one was the afterthought. But you're absolutely right, it's not a metroidvania in its current state. I was way too ambitious with my goals, this was supposed to be a mostly-linear intro segment meant to set the scene for a larger open world, and also a place for the player to get acquainted with their tools. Unfortunately life caught up with me and I wasn't able to get much done for the "main game" section, and it didn't have anywhere near the same level of polish as the intro, so I decided to submit it as-is.
Yeah, I've had a few bugs reported with the anhks. Thanks for your addition! You should be able to read the tablets--every "ruin" is interactable, aside from like walls and things--but you can only read them once, so maybe you read them without noticing? I know when I playtested sometimes I would use a weapon right next to one of them and then keep pressing A through the text and would miss it.
I'm sorry about getting softlocked in the respawn room! I'm guessing it wouldn't let you transition to the next room? That's a known bug (more like a developer oversight, my bad) where it forgets to load the nearby scenes when you reload a checkpoint.
I read your page and the ankh's are supposed to be one time use and they dont regen I can see how I confused that
But with that, it encourages basically dying on purpose everytime you get hit so you save up all hit points for a difficult encounter
And the tablets I could interact with but couldnt read not sure if it was a font issue or a my eyes issue lol
Sorry if my comment came out rude I just saw this one and another jam both submitted to gb jam without updates and assumed. Sorry life stuff prevented you from working on it more
One other thing: Music by Beatscribe. Forgot that when I was putting in the external assets field. Should also mention that all external assets, aside from music, are heavily edited to create a uniform style and to increase memory efficiency.
i got to the part where he told me about the bridge but couldn't find any way forward after that. the game looks nice and i like some of the ideas like the castlevania style system for using tools. there were a lot of alpha holes in the sprites, that is sprites that have areas where you can see through them. walking behind many trees and rock walls i could see my character on the other side, it's not a big deal but just want to give some detailed feedback. the knife's hitbox doesn't seem to align with anything close to the visual which, if that's intentional it's fine, it just feels bad to use. i couldn't get the fists to hit anything no matter how close i got. the music was nice and i really like that it's a one hit ko until you get the ankh, it feels good to get it. i think this could be cool with more work, keep it up!
Thanks for playing! If you'd like to explore more, I'd recommend thinking vertically ;)
Unfortunately those alpha holes are a limitation of the system this is designed for. Priority (which graphics have transparency and appear in the foreground) is decided on a per-tile basis, and there's technically no true "alpha" in the conventional sense. So, in order to give a convincing 3D effect, the top tiles of objects like the rocks or columns have "priority" (will be shown over the player) while the bottom tiles will not, so the player will show above them. Since the player is 16x16 pixels in size with a roughly 6x7 hitbox centered horizontally and aligned with the player's feet, this works out most of the time, but since the player's hitbox is smaller than an 8x8 tile there will be cases when you're right up against a rock or column where the player's sprite extends past the boundaries of the tile with priority and can be seen "through" the object. This is an imperfect solution but I've chosen to go with it, because the alternative is having the player's hitbox be 8+ pixels tall (which would prevent tile clipping) but that would result in more player frustration in areas which do not have a lot of space to move around in.
The hitbox issues are annoying, yeah. I haven't found a good solution to deal with those yet. The problem is that there's a lot of tools the player can use but, due to this being a GameBoy Color game, there's a finite amount of unique projectiles that can exist in any given scene. I think it's around 5 projectiles. The thrown dynamite and pistol bullets are 2, and I need to save room for potential enemy projectiles, so to be conservative both the fist and knife use the same hitbox. That being said, the hit detection is a bit wonky at times, I have no idea why. I'm looking into fixing it, but as it stands it's not a high-priority issue as the game is 100% completable at this stage.
As for the fists not hitting anything...they actually *do* hit things, and you might be surprised at their range if you ever try punching a pot or something, but they don't do any damage to enemies. Have you ever tried punching a snake? Or a bat? Or a t̴̰̲͔͇͖͗̀e̸̲̊͐r̷͔̬̮͖̩͐r̴̖̜̩͙̂̈́i̶̛̖̲̜̻̲̾͌͠f̶̺̌y̶͉̬̑̾̀͛̚i̸̙̮̕̕͝n̸̟̔͌͑̅̍g̸̬̺̼̟͐͂̅ ̴̧̆e̵̯̩͛̈́͜l̷̛͓̻͔̗̠̆̌̈́d̷͉͛r̶͓͈̆i̸̢̛̩̚ț̶̺͈̀ç̵̢̛̙̆̈́̓ḧ̴̡̛͇͇́ ̴͈̰̏̓̍h̵̪̮̃͛̉͐̓ỏ̶͚̠͗͒͋͝r̷͖͇͙̺̓͜r̶͔̮͊̽̔͌ͅȏ̸̟̲̭̂͛̚ṟ̷̎̕? Not the most effective tool, I'll tell you that. Your fists are useful for some problem-solving elements later in the demo, however, so don't count them as useless just yet!