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Not that I know of, but I would love to see a fan-made guide someday :)

To be fair, the budget and manpower for this game is also a poor man's Atlus ;)

I still hope you enjoyed your time!

They dive into the lake and then go through caves and tunnels (possibly dug by the ship itself and then sealed afterward). It wouldn't do to just park the ship outside, visible by anyone when most of Earth has no idea aliens exist.

To their defense, only the first ship in The Lightkeeper crashed (the red one). The second one (blue) and the one in The Trespasser landed on Earth to investigate, but their crew got killed. Though at this point they probably see Earth like the Bermuda Triangle, a place to avoid if you want to keep your ship :p

There is indeed an issue when you try to talk to Terry or Eric a second time during the party, thank you for reporting it. I just published a new version to fix it.

That being said, it shouldn't prevent you from progressing if you only talk to them once. Did you encounter any other issue?

I'm not in a position to check (I'm in the middle of a move, my computer is still in a box and I've got no internet connection) but that seems about right. You have all the important items and seen the ending of both the main game and its extension, so I don't think Falern has any more secrets in store for you ;)

There are three shrine keys, yes. Two are the obtained from side quests, and one from finding a secret in the forest ;)

Not the exact same ship, but it belongs to the same alien specy, nicknamed the 'Peacekeepers' ;)

Thank you! If you're looking for another RPG/Dungeon Crawler, the closest I have is Hotel Demonica, if you haven't checked it out yet. I'm working on an update for it early this year, and I hope to make more like this in the future.

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I added the map markers the very last day of the jam, so it's good to hear they're appreciated :p

Wow, that's impressive and very flattering! It looks like it must have been a lot of work. I'm curious how you did it. Like, how easy was it to add new accented characters to the font and were you able to change the length of the strings?

I appreciate that you've made it a patch to apply to the official ROM, so I'm cool with it! Is that okay for you if I link to your page here and on my social channels?

Nope, Silent Paradise only has one ending.

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed them! ;)

Do you also have all codex entries? They count toward your total completion, just like items.

Yes, right now only Silent Paradise goes above 100% ;)

I don't think this game will receive any update because I already made an improved version/remake for PC, if you want to check it out: https://dreamnoid.itch.io/aereven-sleeping-azure (though it uses my usual ECS-based engine, as described here: https://dreamnoid.itch.io/aereven-lunar-wake/devlog/274028/postmortem-part-1-the...)

So if I get it right, you can use both the left thumbstick and D-pad to move your character and navigate in the menus, but when you're on the map screen they don't move your cursor? It won't appear until you move it out of the current room, but when you bring it close to the edges of the screen, it's supposed to scroll:

Do you remember if that used to work for you in Silent Paradise?

Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying it! I will keep making games as long as people enjoy them ;)

The post-jam versions should fix the issues you've encountered, so thank you for bringing them to my attention ;)

I'm glad you're enjoying this one as well ;)

You should be able to pan on both maps using the left thumbstick or the D-pad (as you move your little cursor). Is it not working on your side?

The headphones can be used from the inventory menu. I should definitely add a prompt to make it more obvious.

I'm also thinking of adding markers on your map so you know how close you are to your objectives (similar to how Hollow Knight has markers for the Dreamers and the Black Egg Temple, nothing more). This way you would know you still have some exploring to do once you enter the tower.

Thank you for the feedback! :)

Yes, I double-clicked the executable and immediately grabbed my gamepad as it started, so I didn't touch the mouse until I tried to fix the camera spinning.

I completed a full circle of the map, it seems that's about it for this prototype?

I encountered an issue at the start of the game: the camera was looking at my character from below and it would spin on its own uncontrollably. At some point, moving the mouse fixed it and I could play normally. 

The initial jumps are probably the hardest part of the game because they feel very tight and if you fall you have to walk all the way back to the initial platform.

The ledge-creation ability is really the stand-out of this entry. It's quite unique and has potential, as demonstrated with the way it allows for wall jumping. It can feel  a bit buggy as it creates platforms on the ground if you're not jumping, and there's nothing telling you they only disappear once you jump off them. But once I figured out those quirks, navigation became a nice little puzzle.

There's not much to it visually but the music is relaxing and as the appropriate "chill puzzle game" vibes. The sound effects were really quiet tough, I had to go to the settings and crank up the master volume while reducing the music volume to be able to hear them.

Anyway, lot of potential there!

The first-person dungeon crawling perspective is an interesting idea, but the fact you can only move to preset waypoints (instead of a grid) is a bit confusing. For instance there was a room where a path was clearly visible on my left, but I had to move past it and turn around to select it. Not being able to look around freely is also quite frustrating.

The biggest issue for me was that the interiors are very same-y and I just couldn't mentally map the space. I had no idea if I had already seen a room or not, so I was randomly selecting exits. It worked a bit better when I got outside, at which point it reminded me of the old point-and-click adventures of my childhood like "Rendez-vous with Rama". But then I ended up inside again and got lost.

I didn't see any paths requiring upgrades to my movement abilities, but I can see how you could turn this prototype into a metroidvania with for example a grappling hook allowing you to select a differently-colored waypoint above your head.

My feedback is pretty much the same as pdil. I enjoyed the art style and the extra dimension. The combat felt pretty good, with nice animations and a variety of weapons that all felt distinct. I bet it would feel really nice with some SFX.

I got stuck for some time on the "crystal jump", and even now I'm not really sure how it's supposed to work. It seems you have to stay stationary when you jump, get the timing for the attack just right and then input a direction? It's very hard to pull of, which is a shame because I figure it could be used during combat to avoid enemies and attacks.

But just like pdil I gave up in the room with the weird blue-ish shape. I was expecting to collect an upgrade that would let me use the metroid-shaped thingies, but I just couldn't figure it out, despite pressing all the buttons on my controller. All the other abilities had a tutorial popup explaining how they worked, but sadly not this one.

Still, a nice-looking entry that would make for a pretty interesting game with more polish. Keep at it! :)

I'm not really sure what to think of this game.

I really liked the animation and sound design for the whip. The visuals and sound are otherwise pretty unsettling, which is kind of interesting.

Throwing knives on a wall and then jumping on them to climb is a great idea. I fell to my death in the segment where you're taught how to throw knives repeatedly to stay in the air. Again, this is a very interesting idea, but dying there sends you all the way back to the start, which feels really punitive and discouraged me from retrying.

But so far I failed to see the 'metroidvania' part. To me, it played more like a Sonic game. You're going so fast that you zoom through the levels and it seems impossible to mentally map or explore this world (though they were a few places where I suspected an alternate route to be). Also, it felt really strange for the jump to stop all running momentum. It makes the character quite "sticky" instead of fluid like Sonic.

There may be something here, but I'm not sure the metroidvania formula is a good fit for this game.

I gave it a try but there was no clear instruction and I quickly found myself playing a different game-inside-the-game...? It was all pretty confusing to be honest.

There may be some interesting ideas under all this, but I think some player onboarding would help them to shine.

It's a really good looking entry, with very nice pixel art (especially the parallax background at the start!) and animations. Kudos on that! Strong Blasphemous vibes too!

Sadly I didn't get very far into the castle because the controls really weren't working for me and it didn't seem like I could change them. I expected to be able to move with the arrow keys, but couldn't. I had to switch my keyboard layout to QWERTY to be able to move correctly with WASD and using the other side of the keyboard to attack was not natural to me at all.

This means I really struggled to fight enemies. I started to explore the castle but did not find any checkpoint. I died after fighting a few enemies (all different and cool-looking!) and was sent back to the title screen, so I gave up.

Gamepad support would go a long way in making this entry more approachable. As it is, it looks really good and is quite intriguing. With more input mapping choices and some player onboarding (tutorials and such) it would surely make for a nice little game! Keep at it ;)

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! ;)

And yes, it was very important to me to block out an alpha as quickly as possible and then dedicate the remaining time to polish. In this case it was 3 weeks to get that first version up and running and the final week for polish. My custom engine and tools are a definitely the reason why I can manage that.

And thanks for reporting this bug, I fixed it for the post-jam version (as well as making sure resting writes the save file to the disk, so you don't lose too much progress after a crash). You didn't miss much though: after that prompt was only a final fade to black and then the credits. ;)

I'm really glad you liked it!

If you play with a gamepad, you can use the right thumbstick to orient the camera a bit and better see where you're going. Sadly there's nothing in-game telling you that, and I have no idea how I could have the same feature with the keyboard controls (I'm open to suggestions if you have any!)

An interesting entry, with strong Portal 2 vibes!

Sadly I did not finish it.

I found the controls to be very slippery, both moving on the ground (probably because you can move very fast, but the animation doesn't match) and while jumping. I kept overshooting platforms, or not jumping far enough. I wrote a note that shadows projected on the ground would help evaluate where I would land, and shadows did appear after the tutorial (why not before?), but jumping was still very difficult.

It took me forever to escape the blue-paint room with dashing. Same for the very next room. And sadly I gave up in the wall jumping tutorial room. It was very hard to wall jump and keep the camera from going weird places.

Combat was also a bit difficult. I liked the idea that you can only stun and push enemies around and you have to create pools of the appropriate color to defeat them. It was an interesting setup. But I kept taking damage while I tried to push enemies around.

Thankfully I could absorb green paint to heal. It was an interesting feature but I didn't understand what absorbing blue paint did? I'm a bit sad I never reached the red paint, but I struggled to reach the wall jumping room and it seemed to me the platforming difficulty was ramping up from there, so I gave up.

Something I really liked was the doors opening to an outdoor city after the tutorial. It was a nice moment!

With tighter controls, I could see this game becoming a very interesting puzzle-platformer! ;)

I finished the game!

It was pretty enjoyable, despite a few usability issues, like the lack of gamepad support and the textbox being difficult to read because the text moves during the typewritter animation (and pressing the button doesn't simply complete the animation, it directly jumps to the next textbox, so I missed quite a few instructions this way). 

The jump was also difficult to control as I would sometimes automatically roll off platforms. 1-tile large platforms were very difficult to jump on, even with the double jump.

The bat has a really short range, making it hard to fight the shadows. It got a bit better once I found the sword, but in the end I mostly avoided them. I really liked the slide though! The Metroid-style ceiling-climbing was nice as well.

The music is good, the graphics and animations get the job done. I liked how some shadow devils were sitting and balancing their legs, like children. It made the reveal from the second spider boss more impactful.

With more time to polish it, I can see it becoming a pretty nice game. Keep it up! ;)

You can rebind all controls in the settings menu. Based on another of your comments, it seems you're using the keyboard; I highly recommend using a gamepad if possible.

With the current jam version, the file is only written when you exit the game or go back to the title screen. I changed it for the first post-jam patch to write the file every time you rest at a bench.

There is indeed a bug, thanks for reporting it. It's not exclusive to the Vengeful Talisman: if you equip a talisman, save and reload, you can't unequip it afterward.

Problem is: I can't submit bugfixes during the jam's voting period. But in the meantime, if it really hinders your progression, I can upload the patched version on Google Drive.

It's strange, I haven't seen Windows Defender trip on it on any of the other computers I tried it on. Is your Windows Defender up to date? The "ml" at the end stands for "machine learning" (meaning AI detection) which is a nest of false positives, but they usually fix it pretty quickly. Anyway, the game doesn't do anything my other games don't. I hope you will be able to enjoy it soon! ;)

Your comment really made my day! Thank you!

As for metroidvanias, stay tuned because I will release a new one very soon ;)

I'm glad you're enjoying it!

For the fourth tablet, you may want to revisit the oasis once you can swim ;)

Hello everyone!

I recently released a brand-new action-adventure game, a new entry in my series inspired by The Legend of Zelda.

Aereven Sleeping Azure is a free action-adventure game for PC/SteamDeck.

I hope it sounds as exciting to you as it did to me when I made it!

Again, it's free, so check it out!

Legends of Aereven: Sleeping Azure 

See you around the Sofore Islands! ;)

The first bit of direction you get is in the temple just east of the starting town. I should probably have put some dialog right at the start to lead you toward it. Audio was a bit of a last minute thing so yeah, I'm probably missing a track or two and reuse some where it doesn't make much sense :p

Thanks! The initial plan was actually to make a Zelda 2-like! (But it kinda meant making 2 games in 1, so I decided to reduce the scope and go full top-down, haha).

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! ;)

I'm really glad you liked it!

Those are all very good feedback! I had to finish the jam early due to scheduling but I will have a couple of hours before the deadline. I'm hopeful I can address some of those issue. If not, it will definitely be for the improved and extended PC version I'm planning later down the road.

If you have more feedback after playing the rest of the game, I would love to hear about it! That's really useful, so thanks! ;)