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Raven's Gate [NES]'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Art and Style | #1 | 4.706 | 4.706 |
| Polish and Completeness | #1 | 4.059 | 4.059 |
| Overall | #2 | 3.941 | 3.941 |
| Sound | #2 | 4.059 | 4.059 |
| Overall Impression | #3 | 3.941 | 3.941 |
| Originality | #11 | 2.941 | 2.941 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Category
Game
This category is reserved for games. Any tools or toys should be submitted to the other category. Mapper 28 compatible entry up to 64KB with NO PRG-RAM is required! Must be free or include a free demo.
License
Agree
This game may be used in a physical and digital multi-cart release and distributed by jam organizers as part of a digital archive (ZIP).
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Comments
Probably my favorite from the compo. Well animated beautiful graphics. I easily found my groove and enjoyed playing through the whole thing. Would love to see more of it.
Great designed game!
The charm and style are excellent, especially in the portraits. It does what it does very well, even if what it does has been done often before. The decision to focus on polish over scale is a strong one, resulting in a solid and very enjoyable experience.
I've been super excited for your work since you've started sharing progress on your other projects, am glad to see another one come to fruition, and eagerly looking forward to more. :D
Thanks M-Tee for the lovely comments. They really give me a boost to continue my nesdev journey :) .
i accidentally softlocked myself :D made it to the end without having realized there was a sword, but i needed one more bomb. pressed “New Game” after Yet Another Death and … spawned on the wrong screen, right atop some trees! but after a fresh reboot all was good. Like has been pointed out, I too experienced graphical corruption at one point, but not to a game-breaking degree. finished it off, with a sword this time!, and i’ve got to say that was a fun little mini zelda-style game
Thanks. Yes there are some bugs that I hope I will fix after the compo. About softlocking, I'll have to test that, haven't been able to do something like that. If you maybe have a bit detailed repro steps, it would be useful in fixing that also.
Thanks for playing :)
i can reproduce it, but i’m not sure what a minimal set of steps would be.
It will begin to load as normal, but then I end up here:
I usually use Nintaco but verified that the same happens in RetroArch’s version of Mesen
Ok. I thought It happened without that graphical corruption, it's probably the same issue of memory corruption. Thanks for help Pineberry Fox.
I found myself appreciating the finer details of this game more than anything. From the dusty footprint animations to the flashing routine when the player gets hurt, to the slight blue flash when the text is drawn during the dialogue screens. There is a lot to learn from this game on how to take a familiar concept and apply a new shine to it in order to make something new.
I love the black backgrounds, it looks incredibly striking in an adventure game. The little weapon sprites are adorable and highly legible.
It is missing the concept of the dungeon from the zelda-like, but I don't really miss it here, the lock and key challenges are dispersed evenly enough throughout the overworld, gating progress at an even enough pace to feel satisfying.
Raven's Gate is an incredibly fine-tuned design.
Thanks Raftronaut for kind words. There is a lot of other things I thought to add (boss, big dungeons, etc...) but I was limited by compo constraints. I maybe continue working on it with different mapper and more memory, so I can implement more stuff that was left out from this entry.
Thanks for playing.
This is really good! I played through the whole thing and I'd love to see more! One minor issue, at one point some stray pixels appeared in the background tiles, as if CHR RAM got corrupted a little somehow.
Thanks Gravel Studios. Yes, there are couple of bugs that needs fixing, like the one you said, there are also some sprite flickers that happen in UI as well on coin pickups, but I can't make any modifications until the the competition ends. I'll probably work on the game some more after the competition and try to create a bigger world with some bosses, as that didn't fit in current entry.
I look forward to seeing the finished product!
Very nice! Quite fun to play. Music is excellent. It controls smoothly. I liked the animation and artwork. I felt like I was jumping into a new NES Zelda game. I would have appreciated some kind of save or password system. Nice attention to detail, such as the character dialog boxes and the falling snowflakes. Overall, a great game!
Thanks for kind words Matthew. I agree about save feature, but as we can't use WRAM I couldn't do anything like that with this mapper that I use ( at least I think I can't ). I could have made a password system, but I think it's an outdated feature this days and creating a save with all the stuff that I track, it would be a hassle. I'll probably create save system if I try to create a full game with different mapper (mmc1 or mmc3) that supports save feature.
Thanks for playing !
Understood about the technical limitations for a save feature in the NESDev Compo build - makes sense. I was thinking more about the possibility of a future release (using a different mapper, as you said). Again, great job on this game!
Awesome game !! A video in your honor.
Glad yo liked it. Thanks for playing !
That title screen... 🤤