itch.io

> why isnt now such a jam?

Well "retro" literally is defined as "imitative of a style." For jams that mandate authentic ROMs you'd be better off joining a jam dedicated to a -- or set of -- system(s), like the jam you mentioned. If you'd like one specifically for the NES, there is the  NES competition over at homebrew forum at NESdev.org (actually it looks they they are hosting it here on itch this year: https://itch.io/jam/nesdev-2022) .

Nice to see another NES enthusiast. Also, maybe the reason why no one holds retro jams is perhaps b/c a lot of people are tired of games that have any kind of 8-bit art? Just a guess. I remember back in 2015/2016 getting a lot of people complaining about this on a 'retro' themed game I published on steam's greenlight -- back when it still existed -- because it had "pixel art." And to be fair they had a point -- mountains of indie 'retro'  games were being shoved out into the ether during the early 2010s. This probably soured a lot of peoples taste in retro. It too affected me, as I now firmly believe that if a game looks like it runs on the NES then the game should run on the NES. That said, I still use modern engines for prototyping and testing my retro ideas -- it's too time consuming to develop a prototype and refactor in 6502 ASM (well it is for me at least).

I kept getting an abrupt "game over." When I run the game it looks like a debug window spawns and it logs an error each time there is an abrupt ending. The errors vary, but one reads "ERROR: Parent Node is busy setting up children, add_node() failed. Consider using call_deferred("add_child",child) instead." Another reads: "ERROR: resumed function '_on_ship_player_death()' after yield, but script is gone..." I am running 64bit Windows 10 btw, I'm not sure if your Apple build has the same issues.

Cool puzzle game idea, it didn't take me too long to figure out what I was supposed to do. This game certainly has a GBC feel to it. Only suggestion I have is to change the rotate button with the lock button, but that's just my first thought and I'm sure if I played enough of this game I'd get used to the current mapping.

Looks like there is partial controller support for this -- I was able to move the character around with my joystick (not the d-pad), but no other controller buttons did anything. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but it would have been nice to map a fire/jump button to the controller. Just wanted to mention this for the dev.

Controls seem tight, although it would be nice for controller support. Love the graphics and the colors; that said I feel like the main character has too many colors -- just a personal preference, nothing more. Sound is lovely, and well balanced. Definitely feels like a megaman game and has an early 90s feel. Also is certainly fun to play.

Reminds me of a GB version of "Getting Over It"

Maybe it's supposed to be a kill screen like in Tetris?

Major 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).