I see elements of several NES games that I love, of course from Batman but also from Shatter Hand.
The soundtrack is amazing, the graphics are amazing.
And the gameplay is amazing.
Play game
Prison City (RetrogradeJam 3 Version)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #5 | 3.576 | 4.380 |
| Graphical Presentation | #5 | 4.082 | 5.000 |
| Sound Design | #6 | 3.756 | 4.600 |
| Controls | #7 | 3.266 | 4.000 |
| Fun | #7 | 3.184 | 3.900 |
| Era "Feel" | #9 | 3.593 | 4.400 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What style of retro game were you going for? (Year/Era/Console/etc)
Early 90s NES
Comments
Gorgeous visuals, especially with the CRT shader. Looks great, sounds great, and is fun. Great level of polish.
My only real criticism is that the controls feel a bit cumbersome, and the character moves a bit slow horizontally.
Fantastic job! :)
Submitted
Parting ShotMajor Shatterhand vibes and some Batman vibes too -- definitely hit the early 90's feel.
God-tier graphics -- great use of color, and tiles and sprites are very detailed. I love the cutscenes graphics as well. There certainly was a lot of attention to detail in this game.
Sound is great and I like that you also took the time to add options (I always forget about this for game jams lol; that said it would be nice for a 4:3 aspect ratio).
The game also teaches you how to play in clever ways and the levels seem like they are just the right size. One minor suggestion I have is to maybe change the color of the machine targets for the first boss -- they blended in with the environment and I initially thought I was supposed to shoot the gun.
In any case this is an excellent game, I'd certainly buy it at a high price if you port it to the NES and slap it on a cart using a mapper from the time (90s).
In my opinion this doesn't look like it could of ever came for the 90's, the sprite work seems to fluid
Submitted
Space BreakYou did a fantastic job capturing the era. The aesthetics and audio were absolutely on point, and it genuinely felt like something that would have come out of the old NES library.
The controls did mess me up a bit, but that's probably just a me thing as I constantly had to tell myself to move using my right hand and act with my left, not many games I play control like that so it took some getting used to.
Only gripe I have can actually be seen as a compliment really. This game's difficulty is also very authentic, in that it is incredibly hard and feels like it punishes you for things you couldn't have known outside of trial an error. It's very fitting for what you were trying to replicate but dang it doesn't mean it isn't still frustrating. Just when I'm starting to get the hang of it I get blindsided and run out of lives and have to do everything all over again. It's a perfect match for the kind of brutal, old school difficulty reminiscent of quarter eating arcade games that the era used to have.
I personally dislike games like this as they tend to fuel my anger and I don't get that same rush from overcoming it that others seem to. THIS IS VERY SUBJECTIVE. There are plenty of more hardcore people who I know who would love this exact kind of challenge and gameplay, it's just not for me.
A great entry that you should be very proud of! I really wish I was better at it!
Submitted
Parting ShotThank you!
It is pretty tough- it’s hard finding that balance between difficulty and learning patterns of levels/enemies, so I made sure not to include many if any random elements- definitely the kind of game that requires a bit of learning to play well (especially the boss of the Skyscrapers level!)
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