This game was hell...
First off: there is this really weird momentum mechanic that's hard to control which also makes you slide off of stuff which is extremely annoying.
Secondly: the lack of instructions at the start leaves players lost. They don't know what they can jump on, where they are suppose to go, what hurts them ect.
Thirdly: A LOT of the AI is buggy as hell. Things don't start moving until you can visibly see them, which leads to players getting ambushed literally nothing they can do, and that's not even mentioning the "double back" bug: the AI often doesn't make up it's mind on what path it wants to take and occasionally doubles back, especially on zone 6 area 3, where it becomes extremely annoying, and down right sabotages run after run.
Finally: The game is lack-luster and difficult as hell. 21 different levels including bosses, and your reward is...well, I'm not gonna spoil it.
I get it, this was probably a side project that you just wanted to get done and put a lot of effort into and for what it's worth, I could genuinely see this being a actual gameboy game in the 19th century minus some of the suggestive designs and dialog. (In spite of all the bugs and nonsense)
Viewing post in Busty Bunny the Bounty Babe comments
I think most of the issues you are describing are due to the limitations of the gameboy itself, and I didn't have the same experience playing on original hardware (though it was difficult).
The friction mechanic is to compensate for the movement in an analog d pad usually, so I never noticed it being an issue personally, and again not sure if it was because I was playing on an actual gameboy, but I thought what you could and couldn't jump on seemed obvious (and it would have been very rare for a gameboy platform to give you any instruction, so the experimentation felt a little authentic).
Gameboy does not have the memory capacity to store all AI states, and memory management often involves instantiating the same object at different points in the level when the screen is triggered at a certain point, so the lack of movement when the player is off the screen is actually the norm, and involves some painful memory tricks if you want to do anything different.
Just giving you my opinions around what you said, as somebody who has developed multiple gameboy games, both in GBStudio and in C. Personally I thought some levels were frustratingly hard, and would have benefited from a checkpoint.
There are instructions... in the manual booklet. I never put in game tutorials as I personally can't stand them. Modern games I feel have a lot of hand holding so I try to avoid that.
The AI isnt buggy. It's behaving exactly as coded. As Saxmachine mentions the GB can't move things off-screen, so the enemy only become active once they enter the frame buffer (ie; just off screen). The double back was accidental but it gives the enemy random movement, which is what I wanted to begin with.
I'm glad you liked it enough to complete it, that says a lot.
Oh...I didn't download the manual booklet, so I...right.
Fair point, but there are still enemies that move into you by the time they are on screen, making parts of the game unfair. As for the double backing, the problem with that is it becomes unpredictable which further disrupts flow when doing good on a level.
Side note: Despite being hell, it was indeed "fun" in a hard to describe way. Even if there are things I don't like about this: thanks for making it and giving people the chance to enjoy your creation.