Puato, here are my clear-cut words about your game called Dino Dark.
This game is QUITE great fun indeed, and it clearly represents a brilliant use of my AAP-64 palette in terms of the graphics, so very wisely picked in terms of your palette choice, first of all!! ;)
Secondly, the premise and overall gameplay of finding a key and going through the door while collecting the many torches that will add 10 seconds each to the timer of how much light you have left is absolutely brilliant, and the way you have nailed the theme of “Medieval Fantasy meets Prehistoric World” is truly bang-on!! And when you get the single-use lances, ohhhh boy, nothing is SO F$&KING SATISFYING than using them to stab at the dino’s bare flesh, killing it dead in such wonderful, wonderful animation as it goes down in a pile of crumpling bones... one of the many fantastic things about this game that I absolutely love!!! ^^
Third, speaking about the animations, they are so fluid and breathtaking for a wide-pixel game, from the chomp from the green dinos to the walking animations of your knight character and so much more as this game is played, which spans itself over the course of all 15 levels in your entry. And you have created quite a good amount of enemy variety as the levels progress, as well as the smooth difficulty curve that ramps up ever-so-slowly from easy to brutally hard as players move forward and forward through the areas, giving them just enough of a balance of torches and ammunition of lances to get the job done. This surely lends itself to a rather interesting puzzle mechanic that is splendid well executed the way you have truly created such excellent level design... and so far, the highest level I have made it to on my very first day of playing it is Level 11!!! ^^ The entire trek can be frustrating and very unforgiving at times in later levels, though, but the beauty of it all UNLIKE SO MANY retro-inspired games of its ilk simply is that Dino Dark actually gives players that “One more go!!!” feeling over and over as he/she tries and tries again, and try again you will... a lot!! Yes, it is THAT difficult, but yes, clearing all 15 levels IS DOABLE. Great addictive fun indeed!!!
If there are some slight problems that hold Dino Dark back a bit from achieving true greatness, however, they are:
- The control setup, because they are auto-mapped permanently to the WASD keys for movement, “Space” key for jumping, and “Enter” for using the Lances (though, I have quickly gotten accustomed to them as I have first played on on my very first go!);
- While the background is clear and very easy to see, the foreground walls look empty, and could use a splash of detail to make them more lively and authentic to the medieval/prehistoric setting you were going for; and...
- The choice of music, because although you were going for an 8-bit aesthetic, you have clearly borrowed 8-bit classical music sources from YouTube at the time of your entry instead of creating all your own original music for your game itself. And therefore, I am marking it down some serious notches quite a bit in the Sound/Music department of your game, although the sound effects sure are very good and truly well done.
Those are my slight complaints, but apart from that, this is overall a TRULY DAMN EXCELLENT entry into my Wide-Dot Pixel Game Jam 2017... outstanding job in creating it and making it all happen, Puato!!! d=(^-^)=b !!