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Thank you for the comment and for giving the game a go; the font for this one was aiming for the feel of those old randsom notes people got in tv and film where the letters were all different having been cut out from various magazines. It was a good idea in my head, I'm not sure it translated the best to the screen. I think working with music/ sound will be something I'll look at more with future games. Thank you again for the comment.

It's looking good so far; I think with a little more tinkering you should be able to get rid of the bugs that remain. It definitely has a gamegear/ master system vibe to it; which was a lot of the Sonic I played back in the day.

Thank you for doing that; looks like June had a number of good games released, and a bit of variety in there. I think you caught a couple I'd not heard about.

Hey there, thank you again. Sorry to hear you're still experiencing issues - I'll message you on SC and find out what's happening. 

Thank you for giving the game a go and testing it in specEmu and inkSpector. I suspect the invisible sprites at the top of the screen are a memory issue rather than an attributes one. I'm currently fixing a couple of minor bugs, but the skull code could be optimized a bit better (a lot of duplicated code). I'll see if I can reduce that down and hopefully that'll get rid of the issue on the top lines at the same time.  I should have an updated version later this week and hopefully it'll fix that issue too. Thank you again for having a look.

Hi there, thanks for the comments.

Regarding your observations. 

1. First couple of levels, that definitely helps. However as you progress, there are skulls that need to drop at least 2 or 3 levels; which forces you to move about and dig more holes in line with each other.

(I've captured a little animation and included it above which includes pirate skulls (need to drop 2 levels) and king skulls (need to drop 3) which hopefully illustrates this - also shows you getting a line of holes planned and then another skull walks into one and you have to move to re-dig the hole once the skull gets free).

2. Skulls on the upper level should be visible. I've observed the behaviour at the beginning of Sabreman's video a few times during development and it usually relates to memory issues (i.e. running out of the 48K available). Later in the video it appears to correct itself (on the 2nd or 3rd playthrough) so I have to assume it corrected itself. In my playtests of the final game I've not seen a repeat of those issues.

I have noticed a couple of minor bugs which I've corrected now and am playtesting to confirm they've not broken anything. I've also increased the speed of the pirate skulls to make them a little harder to avoid. Assuming I see no further bugs, I'll upload the bug-fixed version in a few days time. Note there is a slightly different colour scheme (as per the animation above) to distinguish between v1 and v2 of the game. I think I prefer the green ladders and being able to identify if I'm digging or filling in the holes.

Thank you for giving the game a go and for sharing the video! Have a great weekend!

Thank you for sharing the video. It's good to see these gameplay videos and how easy/ difficult people find the games. It looks like you had gotten the hang of everything pretty well.

Also I find that your videos are a great reminder of how many games were actually released last month, and there are some brilliant ones in there. Thank you for making the videos and for sharing.

Ah wasn't meant to include the file, just a general progress update rather than a new version. Probably the next version will be the final one :-) but I think that will be sometime next month.

Adding a few more youtube videos of people playing the demo. It looks like the bounce/flap mechanics catches people off guard and it isn't only Sabreman getting to the second door and unable to bounce to the top.

Thank you to everyone who gives the demo a go, and especially to those who share videos etc. Hopefully the re-worked "tweaked demo with lots of arrows" helps, along with the better main page instrucions.

Thank you! I look forward to seeing it. 

If you mean the spikey red door with a skull on the bottom (like in the 1st and 2nd screenshots) you can walk up to it and push the direction and when it opens you'll walk straight through. (Don't jump into the red bit though, instant death). I might tweak the timing for the final version :-)

Thank you! I am aiming to have the demo / alpha up Sunday/Monday and then I'll be cracking on with puzzles and tasks for level 2 onwards.

January had a good selection of games! Hope the rest of 2024 goes as well. It's always nice seeing someone play your games; glad you enjoyed them. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you! I'll check out the video a little later when I'm back from the office.  I've started work on another game, which I expect will be available in the next few months and I'll make a "game page" live for it as soon as I have a demo available. Have a rest of the day and thank you again.