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You did a great job! It's really hard to de-bug in time, and on top of that it's a lot to put together all at once. I hope you continue to participate in more!

This is one of the best entries I've seen for this so far, love the tutorials leading the way through the game play and explaining each mechanic as you add it. Also fun, simple music and style. Thanks!

This was great, I kept playing until I was able to reach the chest. Very fun, thanks!

The concept is really interesting, I'd like to see this after it gets bugfixed!

This is the cutest thing I've ever played, Sanna and Tessa are ADORABLE. Love the style, love the townsfolk and the New Leaf joke. Thank you for sharing this with us!

This was a lot of fun to play! The scrolling of the text at both top and bottom of the screen during cut-scenes is a little confusing as a player but not nearly enough to detract from the fun. Clever boss mechanics, good story, simple but effectively challenging puzzles. Fun little action RPG!

HAHAHA I lost it at encountering Strong Cat, this is great. I love how cute and sweet this game is! Well put together, simple and fun. :) Thanks for sharing it with us!

Really love the feel of this game I'd have to agree with the other comment about sometimes not being sure what to do or where to go, but with a couple more visual cues in the places where that does happen I think that could easily be resolved; polish not possible to apply during a Game Jam, really!

D'aaaaawww this is the cutest

This is not only impressive considering the limitations, but it's super fun to play. Nice work!

This is super cute! I love the concept, and I think the garden sim element is fun to play. It's quick so trying out different routes is not difficult to do, too.

Adorable! I didn't go for the bad end but all the others were lovely!

So, after a lot of debating (sorry for the late start-- I was participating in GB Jam 5 until the 10th and then spent a week polishing my entry over there), I actually am trying out GameMaker Studio as a possible engine for this.

Here's the general plan:

You, the PC, are a member of a local Adventuring Guild in the town of Westfen*. About ten years ago a nearby fortress, Castle Linmeadow, was sacked by orcs**, and it's believed that some powerful artifacts remain inside the castle, abandoned by the people who managed to flee before they were killed.

The Adventurer's Guild has been chartered by the town's mayor to go try to retrieve those artifacts. As the PC, you and your NPC party go on a short trip to try to retrieve those artifacts. Gameplay will mostly involve talking and traveling to and from the castle, exploring it-- trying to re-create something similar to the D&D style experience of a group of adventurers traveling the land and presumably trying to do good as they go.

* - Names subject to change, especially this one.

** - orcs are 100% a placeholder unless or until I can think of a less-generic Threat that might've been responsible for the sacking of the castle.

In the long rung I'd like to make it possible to romance all of the characters, but for Yuri Jam limits I'm aiming for just one viable option by the deadline so I don't accidentally bite off more than I can chew!

So far I've grabbed a movement code engine from HeartBeast (since YGJ's main rule is just to have a story about queer ladies and their relationships, I'm trying to focus on making the writing as high quality as possible), and programmed in a cursor-selecting menu for branching choices between gameplay and dialogue moments. I feel a little like I might be re-inventing the wheel on the latter part, since Ren.py handles it so much more smoothly and intuitively, but I wanted to give it maybe a couple of days of research on the Game Maker front, since a previous tool did not pan out for the length of this project.

I feel like I'm joining a race in the third lap, but here are some of the character sketches I did in earlier design, while still trying to determine the NPC party's personalities / skills / hobbies:

Goals for tomorrow:

-Get the menu interface for choice-making fully functional

-Implement the barebones skeleton of the choices that occur over the course of the plot & test it out

BLEH! I love Delsa a lot, obviously, but it's really good to see him online in web-browser friendly form. X3 Glad to see the updated version where it's possible to snag 4 health if you grab that one perfume bottle early on.

This game is tough!

Thanks very much for the review! This is great advice. A lot of the things you've noticed are things I have been working to fix in the later development of the game. (V1.1 has some fixes for some of the things you have noticed, and I'm still working on a 'final' release with a fully triggered ending and such).

Your response to the howl + down to collect is really helpful; you're the second player to make this comment and in practice, I was trying something that doesn't seem to have panned out. Might not make a big difference for this game is it is right now, but it'll inform the things I try when developing future games.

The GBJam release doesn't have all of the music implemented properly, so you are correct about the music feeling more limited than intended. The note about more gimmicks is interesting; I will definitely keep that in mind for improving level diversity in feel!

I don't think this was over-critical or anything, I appreciate the helpful feedback and notes to improve on. This is my first game-jam game ever, and I was working solo so every piece of advice is a huge help! Thanks again!

Pixel Soldier review:

Difficulty scales up quickly but effectively; with simple sound and graphics, it looks like you were able to focus on developing interesting/satisfying mechanics, and on that front this game really delivers. The effect of hopping around the screen to dodge bullets is made to be a bit more rewarding because it also improves the speed with which you can dodge enemy missiles, making a skilled player able to avoid taking damage while knocking out the challenges set before them.

Supports a waves/ boss style; I'd say something a little clearer in the game itself about what the controls are might be helpful, the first time I was sure what all my options were was after I decided to try remapping them to see if I was missing anything. (They are in the gamepage though so that is helpful as well).

Music and graphics are a bit on the simple side but I feel like that suits the game's style and contributes to the overall gameboy feel. Bosses drop health boosters but I didn't see any power-ups along the way, I'd say that's what I want out of potential future additions to this game's development: the ability to shoot different projectiles, more of them, etc, as a direct result of the bosses killed and such to keep the gameplay robust as players progress.

Overall I'd give it a 4/5 stars, especially considering it's a GBJam game but looks rather polished.

My game is The Curse of Talon Cyphyr

UPDATES:

Home stretch! Thanks to some help from folks in Discord, switched to composing music assets using BeepBox.co (was having problems with Deflemask's exports, unfortunately).

Level 1 designed, Level 2 in process. All deadly hazards implemented, though still need to add moving platforms / disintegrating platforms.

Weird glitch encountered where anything using the text box code in the same room as another thing using the text box code is triggered as if they're the same thing? Too tired to figure it out right now.

Tomorrow, hoping to finish up level designs for all 5 "exploring" levels and the home / central screen, as well as output a couple more musical themes so each zone has a unique one.

Some screenshots below; not currently using a tileset on the background (just doing color), but if I have time I'd like to try to make one, especially after seeing some of the great BG art others have been using here!

As long as the palette selection tool is like...by keyword and not color, I think you're fine. If the palette selection has the whole availability of all the palettes it'd still be more than four colors, but like if you had a button for 'red', 'green' and 'purple' with the words written there it should be fine I think!

Yep, this has been addressed on a few other threads, but you can switch to a new set of 4 colors for different levels as long as the number of unique colors on screen always is 4 or less.

I think most people are sticking to one palette for simplicity's sake but if you have it in you to switch from place to place, you totally can!

Nicely done! It's simple, it works. Controls are smooth. Main menu didn't seem to navigate, but I'm assuming this may be something that still must be added later?

Haven't been updating here but!

I've gotten a lot of things done, though! I'm super excited.

UPDATES:

* Spikes now can drop and, if you touch them, end Talon's journey early-- watch out for them!

* Talon can howl, causing wild berries to bloom and become edible!

* Game can loop back to beginning after hitting Game Over screen

* Menu screen implemented

* Collectibles can be collected, and Talon only chomps down if the collectible is a blooming wild berry!

* NPCs can be talked to

Most of what's left now is music and level design. I'm a little nervous it's taken me this long, but I think I should be done in time for the end of the Jam.

Talon's garden has been cursed! She asks her witch friend to help her out with breaking the curse, and has to go collect a few items to cast the necessary spell.

So far I have:

-motion & basic animations

-textboxes that freeze the player when you interact with 'em

-can interact with items that need to be picked up, receive 'em, have them disappear

-sprites for the various folks she'll meet

-two musical themes partially composed using Deflemask

Left to do:

-fix sprite flipping on Talon; additional animations if Talon gains abilities (probably won't since I don't know how I'd code 'em)

-design levels (5 planned)

-add "hazards" (planned: spikes that drop as you pass under them; puzzles w/ blocks to push)

-finish music composition

-menu / controls image assets

-end screen, possible 'game over' screen

Here's some shots of a test room I made to check that all the sprites I made are animating properly, and work on prototyping the text boxes and such:

I still need to fix my palette, too-- white and black and some shade of orange are definitely in (haven't decided which shade of orange yet), and either blue or purple. Going for Halloweeny colors! I know it's not Original Gameboy color compliant exactly but I kind of feel outclassed by most of the people's games on here either way, so I thought maybe I should embrace my lack of experience with pixel artistry and go for something weird.

Anyway! I'm feeling a lot better about this than I did when I couldn't figure out the text boxes. So yay!

This looks so amazing!

Ah! Thank you, I was trying to figure out what was causing the blur!

Luck! I'm alone on my own project and I can sympathize.

\o/ !

I think so! This is my first time trying to do a game jam totally solo, myself. I'm sure we'll all kick butt!