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Great game!

The possession mechanic is really cool. Solving the puzzles by becoming a spider, dropping a skeleton on the button was really satisfying. It's also really in depth that we can use the enemies' abilities when we have them possessed. There's a really solid range of mechanics here, I really wish it could've been used more but it seems you guys were pressed for time. Oh well.

There are some bugs and the end state is unclear, but the game is still very beatable and playable. Nothing fatal, thankfully.

I really like the visuals and the music, they're very well made, and really sell the Zelda vibe. The highlights on certain tiles, the way the walls slope inwards like in ALTTP, all very well crafted.

Thank you! 

The meta story is mostly in my head... it wasn't really committed to paper besides 2 or 3 diary entries, I couldn't really get it going during the jam period. 

But it basically follows a team that's level-headed but doesn't have much experience, especially with developing for the Game Boy. The director is this artistic, indie comics guy they've all had history with, and looked up to, but he's experiencing internal turmoil, which reflects on the game's design and themes - they revolve around him feeling trapped and hopeless. Which is what the first dialogue in the game is all about. The game is as if it was the inside of the director's mind at the time, a "maze of violence."

The team sticks by him regardless, despite questioning him a whole lot. Because how could anything like that be released for strict Nintendo's very own handheld console? Despite multiple attempts to sanitise the product it just leads to more fighting, and doesn't really get anywhere. Out of a deep, potentially supernatural veneration for the guy and his work they still keep developing though. Until one day they stop, and somehow all vanish. Many years later, a build is anonymously leaked. Then it's up to your imagination to fill in the blanks with explanations of either a more mundane or metaphysical character.

It was greatly inspired by, and would have had the more conspiratorial, occult, sinister elements of, Drowned God by Harry Horse. Another great source of inspiration was Basilisk 2000 by Akuma Kira, which is a game I thoroughly recommend if you enjoy this kind of story.

Yeah, it's kinda like Kid Dracula. Really enjoyed it https://cobaltaoi.itch.io/the-boy-and-the-mysterious-amulets

A GBC version sounds really interesting, looking forward to it. Regarding difficulty I think you could perhaps do what Bloodstained did, and have a sort of classicvania mode difficulty. If you fall into a pit or spikes you now lose a life, there's knockback, etc.

As for the hitboxes they're pretty fine anyway, you'd only want some minor QoL adjustments here and there.

Also, no problem and good luck with the post-jam version!

This is the second nearly flawless and super authentic GB Studio Castlevania game from this jam I've thus far played. How do you guys even do it?

First off, yes. The gameplay is very, very close to being perfect. Had this been released back then, and it does feel like it could've been, it would've been considered a feature complete, sleeper hit import. Considering that this is a jam game: wow. This is in between Castlevania Adventure and Castlevania Adventure 2 in terms of gameplay content - that's nuts! The main difference between both is regarding the subweapons, which 2 had and 1 didn't.

Which brings us to yes, the shuriken. The shuriken is a very functional throwing knife at specific points in the game, but its overall usefulness is a bit limited. For example, at least in my experience you will want to throw them on them skelly youkai liberally, but not on the final boss, you want to try for a double whip when he lands. Which is just fine, it's just that the game gives you a lot of them and you don't really use them too often. Bit of a shame, I do wish there were more situations that called for them.

Furthermore on the gameplay front, there's just some really, really slight hitbox issues with the umbrella, you can whiff quite a bit against it. Barely worth mentioning, however. Also barely worth mentioning is that there are some slight timing improvements that could be made. Such as the final boss lingering on the floor just slightly longer so you can get the double whip on 'im, the dragons that pop out of the pipes taking some extra frames to fire or you being able to whip their fireballs, that kind of thing. I mention it because this being such an amazing, basically feature complete GB game I do believe that it's very worth continuing, patching, something like that.

The presentation is really damn good. I really appreciate the eye for detail. The boss health bar charging up, the varieties of youkai, the very retro artstyle. Musically, it's really damn good as well - I especially like the half-step progression (?) in a section of the stage 1 theme, it rocks! The entire package has such a Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon vibe to it, I was smiling the entire way because I love that game.

Just beautifully done.

Appreciate it! I put a lot of effort into making everything as GBy as possible. 

The spiders are 4 frames of animation, and do not turn towards the player. I find it helps sell the original gb RAM limitation. They were also based on a GB game I played when I was a kid that was a bit unsettling, but I have no idea what it was.

Ok, this one actually creeped me out. Really creeped me out.

The buildup of tension, the way it goes from environmental clues that something is not quite right to survival horror as the convincingly 90s music, crafted to lull you into a false sense of security, just stops dead in its tracks is brilliant. Very well done. Achieved without jumpscares, too. She's just REALLY CREEPY to look at, but at no point you're just flashed with a jumpscare.

The presentation is on point for the gameboy, and this is doubtlessly aided by its being a gbstudio game. I especially liked that there was care to make everything look period-accurate. You're not browsing emails, you're reading diaries. The house isn't too modern, it's furnished like an older home. Our protagonist is dressed in a retro way. It really just feels like something that could've been made back then, and specifically for the Gameboy at that. Good eye for detail there, it greatly helps immerse the player.

All in all, a great, ambitious offering.

It's conceptually interesting. 

As said below, the mechanics are a bit hard to grasp. Eventually, you do find out what the game wants of you but since your reaction window is so small you're likely to be hit with many game overs that make no sense at first. I think the game would be a lot better if things were slowed down a little.

It's graphically nice, but a bit... mixelly? I don't know. The circle around your character seems to be a higher ress than is possible, though that isn't the case as the ress is 160 x 144. Bit strange. 

The overall presentation is competent, however. And the music is pretty good. I just wish you could resize the window.

This was beyond amazing! I have little to say on this. I usually write longer-form reviews, but what can I say when everything on display is just right and very skilled? The graphics remind me of Castlevania a little bit and have a decent amount of variety to them - the intro scene is gorgeous. The music reminds me of The Messenger.

The controls, it's understably hard to get a handle on them at first due to the ambition of the game vs the gameboy limitations. Fortunately, everything is designed with that in mind, so at no point beyond the point of getting used to it all does it become a hindrance.

The puzzles are simple, but they're just fantastic. I really like how action packed they are. Puzzlers aren't really my favourite genre, and yet I had a lot of fun committing wire robbery then running and jumping away from the ghosts so I can quickly place the wires where I need them to be.

Awesome game. Definitely continue this should you want to.

Thanks!

It was a very nice, small game, and the art is great. Gameboy soul is off the charts since it's running on original hardware, too.

I didn't really have an issue where I was confused by the locations, but that may be because where you are is somewhat inconsequential... You can "solve" the game rather quickly, with no downsides to mass farming of resources before each quest. Then it becomes a matter of navigating in and out of menus. I wonder if that could've been a bit different with, say, fail states as skeletons pop up if you're at the graveyard at the wrong time, fail states involving the witch waiting for too long on your cure... think each search action consuming 1 unit of time, and when you run out you end up in a fail state. 

Still a very pleasant little adventure with a nice little story, felt like an adventure game of old. Great work.

Thank you!

Wait, you're telling me that in 5 DAYS you solodevved:

• The amazing music, thought that the first tune was Chopin.
• The awesome graphics, everything looks really great, varied, and convincing
• The very good gameplay that seems inspired by Kid Dracula
• The adorable artstyle?

That's nuts! And to top it all off the entire thing is made in GBStudio, feels like it too. Even the logo is intensely GB era.

There are only some minor imperfections. The first one is that it's not immediately obvious what you need to do to prevent the... literal Rondo of Blood chase as a spirit (seriously, wow!) from overtaking you in stage 3. You have to let him overtake you, but in my experience this results in mandatory damage. Additionally, some enemy hitboxes could be a little more generous. The platforms' physics can be slightly confusing at times, too.

It's SO CLOSE to perfection. Please continue this, and make it a cart, give it a digital release, etc. and so on. There's a whole boatload of talent here, and despite the very few complaints this is a straight 10/10 from this Castlevania fan based on the sheer soul on display, and the savant levels of solodevving alone.

Ah, I see. A lot of effort went into this. But yeah, I noticed the frowning faces but since it didn't seem to impact anything I thought that wasn't a big deal. Also no problem!

I did NOT read the tagline, and thus I was very, very surprised.

This game actually managed to creep me out. And to make me keep playing for quite a while as I became less afraid of the ghost, and started cussing at her and the screen instead lol. The sign of a great game right there.

I really, really enjoyed it, but it's definitely not for the faint of heart or clumsy of hand. I appreciate a good challenge, and the more I played the better I got at the game. However, the difficulty is still BRUTAL. I think the spikes could do with a smaller hitbox, and there could be less hopping enemies along the path you're running, for example. And less subjectively, I think that the falling block physics may be a little awkward? Or maybe I just suck, that's always a possibility.

The presentation is incredible. There's cute, there's nightmarishly horrific, holy crap did you guys do an awesome job of it. Everything from the graphics to the music really helps sell the vibe and the twist. The graphics are very technically excellent, with the apparation's hair physics as a massive standout. The music is very 8 bit era, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Awesome game!

Stunning presentation. Very little to say regarding the audio the graphics, as it's all just top-notch. How people extract such dulcet tones from the humble GB chip is something that eludes me, and the level of graphical fidelity makes my hands hurt just from looking at it!

On to the gameplay: And then the hotel started Friday Night Funkin'. it's really good if a little repetitive. I was expecting the game to eventually ramp up in difficulty, but it never came. There's a fair amount of standing and waiting with the occasional minigame thrown your way. Bit of a shame because the base is very good. Maybe an extra minigame and a steeoer difficulty curve would've helped but of course, the earlier part of this statement is greatly subject to the constraints of the jam.

As a last note: It's labeled as an "asset pack" when it's a full game, maybe you guys misclicked? Might be worth looking into it with the jam organiser on Discord so you could change the game's category during the jam period.

I'd like to preface this review by pointing out that this is not a game - it's an anti-game. But by Jove, this could make even Captain Ahab let out a good ol' hearty chuckle! The anti-game humour is on point throughout, it's fantastic.

The presentation is almost immaculate, and does contribute to the anti-game philosophy. Opening every chest does feel very satisfying. The fish seems to have a new line of dialogue for every in-game interaction, and he's voiced pretty decently at that.

Extraordinarily creative, great job!

Wow, what a great game! Like others have said, it is a lot more complex than it lets on - while not being overwhelmingly so for the jam format. The presentation is fantastic, too. It's very impressive that you've made this in 3 days.

Getting over it with Eldward Droidy.

I liked it quite a bit. The level design clearly had some thought put into it. The gameplay is extraordinarily stressful, but it rewards skillful play, and you can feel yourself getting better and better the more you play the game. I wish the jump was a little more lenient/had something of a momentum to it, but you could make chalk this up to the dreaded skill issue as displayed by yours truly. Lol.

All I know is that the game had me on the edge of my seat, and that's a very good sign!

As regards the presentation, everything looks nice, and I like the transitions between zones. You said there was music though, right? Sadly, I couldn't hear anything on either the Windows version or the browser version of the game. NO WAIT MY HEADPHONES WERE UNPLUGGED!

Great job!

Very understandable. The camera is indeed a little odd, maybe it was too zoomed in for the pace of the gameplay. Ctrl to shoot... it should really not have been my first option, in hindsight. I should've stuck with my trusty Z-X control scheme, but oh well. Thanks for playing!

As someone who doesn't even really enjoy puzzle games, I thought it was a fun puzzler! Since I don't have a lot of experience with this genre it's hard to comment on the gameplay, except for the fact that I found the challenges well-designed and the gameplay streamlined nicely. The presentation is neat, although some things, like the goal could be more clearly defined. However, there's one thing that greatly hurts both the presentation and the gameplay: the algae/black masses obscure the view. Is it intentional? It led to some frustration whereas there'd be none, and that's a damn shame.

Great job on this game!

It took me a bit, but then it hit me: this game is actually really fun! It could use some more polish on the asset side of things, but what's here in terms of gameplay is really nice. I do wish you were capable of more precise movement by having access to full tank controls, but as it is it's enjoyably, refreshingly simple.

Like the earlier comments have said, there's a bit of choppiness. Seems like it doesn't figure in the Windows version. Didn't really bother me, though.

What was a bit hard to get over was wrapping my head around the game. An in-game tutorial could've gone a long way - I didn't even know how exactly to move the catamaran until I figured out it was RTS controls. I can tell there's a very solid game here, especially for the deadline and amount of team members (beautiful visuals!) but once I thought i had it all figured out the game would zoom in to an island camera which I have no idea how to untoggle. Thus ended what I thought would be a good run, and for shame. The game's idea certainly is nice.

Thank you! I worked really hard on the music on a very tight deadline, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it!

I must preface this review by saying that I have never, ever seen grazing outside of a bullet hell game. What a brilliant idea.

This entire game is somewhat comparable to that, actually. It's like a SHMUP level, except without the shooting. There's even a boss!

The graphics and audio are top notch. Great, great job on the graphics with beautiful sprites + what I presume is sprite stacking, and if you hadn't told me that the music is from Kevin MacLeod I wouldn't have even known because it fits really well. What a great atmosphere you've crafted here.

There's not much more I can say on this that doesn't amount to any variant of "see, this is how you make a game in 3 days". One simple idea distilled to its bare essentials - steer with the mouse, protect yourself with a click, but executed masterfully. It doesn't need to be more than it is, and neither does it need to be less.

If I have a small criticism is that you'll sometimes want to read the dialogue text at the bottom, but doing so puts you at risk of colliding with something. I would suggest moving all dialogue to the top of the screen since that's where stuff comes from. I would also say that voice acting would further enhance this game's atmosphere and make reading more optional should you choose to make a post-jam update to this game, which I firmly believe you should - this is a great portfolio piece.

It felt very Survivors-like, in a way. The presentation is rather great, and it was definitely fun to play.

I don't know if it's just me being bad, but it feels like the camera doesn't look ahead enough, and there's a disconnect between the player character's movement, aiming, and firing. The end result is that I would run face first into an enemy without really intending to, while trying to negotiate other enemies as I reached for the various cards. Ended up mostly using the basic attack because of that. Off the top of my head, something like using the scroll wheel to scroll through cards + mouse attack to fire, and a line protuding off the player that shows the direction you're facing and thus aiming at would've alleviated my issues.

Speaking of the cards they're all very good at what they do, and my favourite aspect of the game is that it rewards skilled play. Throw the right cards at the right time? You feel like you could card combo the entire store! However, something about them is.. they're hard to get at a glance. You'll have to get familiarised with everything and what it means. For example, not to backseat dev (!) but the slow cards I feel could rather have been represented by something like a traffic light. Instantly recognisable.

I like the setting, it was pretty funny. The graphics are somewhat mixel-ly, but that's just an old man sprite artist's pet peeve, don't mind me too much - everything does still look nice. The music is rather superb, great job on that.

This is great for a MiniJam game, fantastic job guys!

PS: I tried replaying it one last time to be as fair as possible to the game, and I do find that like some have said before, you get used to how it plays with time. I do still stand by what I've said, just a quick note.

PPS: I forgot to mention social battery/health. I think there should be more of a cooldown state when you get hit by an enemy that disables enemy collisions so that the player can get mobbed a little less. For that matter, the vending stations are fairly readable, but a tooltip above each of them could've helped. Maybe compass arrows indicating where each station is, but that's just too much for 3 days of jam.

Thanks for the play and the review. Enemy balance is something that kind of went off rails due to both the method used to deliver enemies and their attack patterns:

• They fly in from offscreen at different speeds, not even an universally set speed because I would only figure out to do that after I'd eyeballed the entire level.
• Their patterns are a basic "shotgun" spread, only a few of which track the player. And I believe I overdid it on the amount of bullets.

So yeah, I would say that balance was rather spray and pray, and that unfortunately held the rest of the game back. As an experienced, not the best but experienced player of those games I'm familiar some tricks like micro and macrododging that do help.  For example, the tactic you used, going fast around the bullet patterns for the cards is actually macrododging, and to a point it was intentional. To a point.

Thanks for the review. If I had had more time with it it would've looked like a fairly different creature, but I greatly overshot my scope this time around.

Yep, the background and the collectibles are 2 things that do need a major revamp. I'm thinking a full revamp of how the bg works (semi-monochromatic shmups like this ought to have a simpler bg really), and as regards the petals to make them stand out a bit more by both adding a white outline to them as well as making the player attract them if they're near them. Thanks for the feedback, I'm def planning on a 1.1 of the game!

The platforming is very enjoyable, especially the double jump! A bit tough, though it's very fair (aside from 2 instances which I'll discuss in a lil). The level design is really solid for a game like this. Not supremely challenging, not too easy. It's at just the right spot to encourage getting better.

The two issues I had were, you can bug out in the ceiling, especially later down the line, which is a bit rough. Additionally, I wish the hurricane hurtbox was a little more generous, that would make the platforming even better.

The controls did throw me off a lil at the start, but after getting used to them it's not such a big deal. Regardless, it would be cool if everything was mapped to the arrow keys eg. if you're on top of the dragon you and the dragon enter a state where pressing left or right get it moving in either direction.

Solid game!

PS: I like the fact that you used 1bitdragon for the music, it's very thematically appropriate.

I enjoyed it. The sprites are quite alright, the fx is quite satisfying. Mechanically, I think that the dragon's hitbox might be a bit large, so you have a hard time reacting to the balista shots.

Also, there's a little bug that makes it so that if you collide against the side of the screen you'll move ahead at incredible speeds, but it doesn't hamper enjoyment at all tbh. Solid little shooter!

For something made in 3 hours it's quite good! Otherwise I'm sure you realise that the gameplay loop is a bit simple, etc. I can't comment on Trijam, but in Minijam it's still decently enjoyable for what it is.

The presentation has a sort of Atari/Java mobile game vibe that I like. Some real neat sprites for 1 person working for 3 hours!

It's very charming, and the presentation is very good. I really like the music. Overall, it gave me fond nostalgic memories of old Flash games. I do have to say that some parts of the presentation are better than others, the dragon is a little odd imo.

I wish the game had a fail state, however. I understand it's supposed to be a more chill experience, but the concept is really solid with the strategising around upgrades and a fail state would've been really cool. Makes me wonder what a Recettear style game like this would look like ;

The art is great and sold the mood really well! I wish there were effects for every ship you sunk and a little more challenge, but that's about it.

I enjoyed it quite a bit! 

The level design and the platforming was spot on, except for maybe one too many pitfalls. The boss fights are a bit too easy though? I mean, I just spammed them dead.

The audio was good and appropriate, but it's a bit loud.

Overall, I can see that you really took your time with it, and it shows in the level of polish the game has.

That's very fair. I wanted to make the game a bit more of a very casual, easily understandable SHMUP so I did away with things like visible player hitbox, focus mode, etc. Replacing the missing bullet hell stuff with some acceleration on the player controls is a great idea.

I'm very likely to make a 1.1 due to how quick and simple it would be to improve so many things in the game, so I'll be definitely be implementing that + a bunch of other quality of life features.

All fair points. I was balancing the game out after basically a day of continuous devving lol, so the stuff I decided to implement last minute like difficulty scaling over time was a bit busted. Originally, the enemies would spawn at closer to the rates you see at the start of the game and nothing else, so that influenced their hp pool quite a bit.

A lot of the dissonant art stuff you see in the game is the result of overreliance on in-engine colouring and image blending over adherence to the palette due to trying to make everything look alright while being pressed for time

As regards clarity of the upgrade buying option I was so mushbrained at the end of it of it all that I was going to implement a simple "-(number of petals you lost)" draw call whenever you picked it up, but I was just too exhausted

There's a certain Atari-like charm and an interesting gameplay loop idea to this game, but imo it needs some polish. During the shmup section of the game, some of the little enemies are liable to almost teleport in front of you. I also had to maximise the window because some stuff, like coins, were hard to identify at first? I thought they were enemy shots.

The cave is an interesting concept, I just wish that the controls weren't divided between mouse and keyboard. Fortunately, the keyboard controls are pleasingly simple so it's not too much of a dissonance.

I'm on Windows 11, and it just won't open. Doesn't throw me any errors though, just completely fails to launch the application.

The presentation, the music are really good! I love that vibe and artstyle, feels very PSX.

Gameplay's a bit rough, though. My fire meter also froze, and well I thought that was a good thing because I... couldn't find my way around very well. In a maze game like this, it's ideal when you have landmarks to help guide you around. For example, the walls in one section of the maze are made of rock, there's a rat tunnel in this one here corner, a skeleton in the other one, that kind of thing.

Everything was so charming and nostalgic though that it kept me playing, really reminds me of one of those old collect-a-thon games, only in first person.

There are some hiccups with the performance. Idk if it's my browser, but whenever I look up I get crazy frame drops. I get stutters while the map first loads too. Additionally, I had to Unity fullscreen it really fast after reloading the page, partially because of the drops.

Good experience all around, though!

This was a pretty cool experience, the presentation reminds me of Yume Nikki quite a bit somehow! I think it's the lamps, the cheery atmosphere contrasting with the dark, and the fear of what might be in it... Inspirational, for sure!

However, as regards that I do wish that there was something slightly unsettling in the dark that you had to avoid. But that's just me, really. 

I do however have to say that the objective of the game feels like it's the game, the experience itself, like something like Flower. But like Flower it's simply good, so it was a joy to play.

Great lil experience, gave me some stuff to think about!

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The concept is really unique and brave, and at no point it feels like it detracts from the fun puzzle-like experience. Got an uncanny sense of atmosphere from the shadow people just walking in front of me out of nowhere, to the point it felt a bit like an horror game lol. The presentation is really good, I wonder what a game like this would look like if it emphasised those creepy shadow people even more though.

Great job!