I play on an EZ Flash Jr for my gameboy. No mod required. I think they run around $40 now. There are cheaper knock-off flash carts you can get though.
Actually EZ flash is a knock-off of Everdrive. Any of those are great options honestly. I’ve run mine for over a year now and I play it all the time. It’s as easy as popping the micro SD into my computer, putting the game file on it, and popping it back into the flash cart.
This game is awesome. Not gonna lie, when I first opened it and moved around I thought, "this won't hold my attention for long." I think the tiny sprite and the movement felt a little floaty or something. Not sure. But I pressed on and before long I discovered the catch.
This game is built on very tight platforming. Challenge rating is very high. It reminds me a bit of I Wanna Be The Guy mixed a bit with Celeste. I couldn't put it down! As I kept playing it kept going on! I'd come across a room and be like "nope!" Come back to it a while later and have equipment that enabled me to do it, or just a better handle on the controls. The map is very open, but also kind of grows in challenge as you move through it.
Super super well done! I have not finished it, but I definitely will keep playing until I do.
(Also, I'm playing on a flashcart on my GBA... and I'm not one to use save states for the purpose of easing the difficulty or fast-tracking through stuff, but... I don't know how you're supposed to complete this game without it. For real! So... I apologize for cheating, but also I intend to continue. I am not this good. Maybe a day will come when I'll cycle back around and play through save-state-free. But it is not this day!)
Thanks for making it and thanks for making it free. Just sent you a Coffee. It's totally worth at least that much!
You bet! Here it is, looking and feeling grand!
I totally get the style choice for the cyberpunk. you sure don't need to apologize for your design choices. It's your game. You make what you like and makes sense to you!
SOme day soon I hope to be making gb games of my own. I hope I can do so as well as you've done. I mean it!
This game feels really slick! I've played through 2 endings. PLayed on my GBA using a flashcart. What a fun experience!
The art style slams! You're really a fantastic artist. music was fun and energetic! The movement and collision mechanics felt really clean. level design was great!
My only critiques would be the mature content (I could've done without the nudity, personally. But you did give fair warning) and the attack mechanic. At times attacking seemed to lurch forward, but not always. maybe there's some intentional dash mechanic there. If so maybe incorporating a visual sign to instruct how to activate it would be useful. If it's a bug, it's not game-breaking and sometimes I found myself trying to utilize it when jumping and attacking.
overall, great game! I found it very challenging, but not infuriating. Really good balance. I can see a lot of growth in your dev skills since delmonico. keep it up! I enjoy playing your games!
Just played this on my GBA using a flash cart. Very enjoyable little game. Closer to a visual novel than a game imo, but still very cute and fun.
My only complaint would be the cleaning mechanic. Pressing the action button when coming across cobweb would have been more enjoyable if it either brought up a minigame to clean it, or just made it disappear. The dialogue box asking if you want to clean it felt a bit clunky, and by the end of the game felt like it drug the game out without making it more fun.
Aside from that, I loved the game. I haven't completed both (or all?) endings, but I did the good one and I could see where the choices split. Oh, the music! So good! Artwork was a plus as well!
This game absolutely rocks. It feels a bit like Shovel Knight in how it plays and the dialogue and everything. So so good! If you're still planning on further development, good luck! You've nailed it as far as what you've already done.
I agree with some of the other comments I'm seeing below about the boss fights feeling a bit flat. But I also get the time crunch for Jams and just how complicated coding a single boss fight can be in comparison to the rest of the game.
Aside from that the basic gameplay is so satisfying. Challenging, but not brutal. Artwork, sound, and music is also really stellar!
Alright boss, I've played through most of what you've got posted on itch. My mind is blown! You're such a talented dev and artist! Sad to see you're not currently working on this one, as it's a total gem! This feels like the early portions of a Zelda-level GB game. You've got so much variety packed into this fun-to-play action/RPG-esque adventure game! The artwork, the dialogue, the character progression. It all feels so well designed.
I had put this on my flashcart a month or so ago, got busy and forgot about it. Just picked it back up and played until I think I ran out of stuff to do and was like "Well, let's go buy the full game!" Only to rediscover that it was in development, but looks like it's not anymore...
I totally get it. Reworking an old project such a drag! So take this either as encouragement to push through the pain to complete it, or as accolades for a fantastic old project. Whichever you please.
Looking forward to whatever you've got in the works. Thanks for posting this one. I enjoyed the heck out of it and will replay again focusing on different skills next go around.
So good! I loved playing this. I love the shop and the pickups. I love the general feel of screaming through an asteroid field. It feels natural and chaotic. I really love the planets in the background and your star system. It looks so cool! Your music is great too! Overall amazing game!
Btw, I'm here because @Krystman posted your game on his Advanced tutorial. I too was late to the showcase. Maybe I should send him my project as well, although it's a lot rougher around the edges than yours and does not deviate from the original recipe as well as yours does!
Seriously, this is fantastic! Keep it up!
Thoughts after completing the demo on my GBA.
I am still floored how good the visuals and overall feel of the game is!
One thing that stood out to me on a second playthrough was that there's not a good indication that battling does anything for you. I mean, it's fun to battle, which at the end of the day should be enough when playing a game. But there's no XP, or money or anything. Not sure you want to introduce that sort of mechanic, but something that helps the player feel like they've progressed even when they stop to battle someone on the train or in the city they could otherwise walk past might be fun. Personally it entices me to hunt for fights rather than view them as obstacles.
You do such a good job story-telling. Your dialogues feel good and meaningful without being cheesy. Props!
incredible visuals! Controls feel nice! Such a great little game. Played it on my GBA last night. Really enjoyed it. I totally agree with ChunkySteveo below. If you're finished developing this, I'd just call it Bark Sequelo and leave the Demo off the title. You might call out that it's a short game, but he's absolutely right. This is more feature-full than many other GB-esque games on itch.
That being said, I would love to see a longer version of this game. If you're interested in working that way, you could also leave this as the demo and keep developing a longer-play game to sell. Or just leave it as-is! Haha, it's fantastic!
Whatever you decide to do, props on an incredible project! I love it!
What a fun game! Art style is perfect, upgrade system is fun, controls are intuitive! (Sorry, I don't know if the sound/music was good. I had it muted, but I'm sure it was great too!)
You mention sending it into space on a dusty cartridge... *could* this be released as a .gb, .gbc, or .gba file so that it can be played on a dusty cartridge?
This looks and feels so Gameboy-y, but I'm guessing it's more than a Gameboy could actually handle. But... had to ask.
Found you from Eligos' post. (Started on itch > X > Broke Studio > back to itch. I thought it was a funny journey.) I've been hunting GB Homebrew for years. I can't believe I've not come across this before! Always fun to find there are talented/committed devs I haven't discovered yet!
It looks unbelievably packed and polished. Will be purchasing soon! I understand (a bit) how much work goes into a game. Thanks for all the time and care you clearly put into this! It really looks incredible!
*happy gorilla noises*
I remember playing this with my brother on my grandpa's DOS computer!
After playing for hours our favorite cheat became flinging the bananas straight through the buildings at the highest speed possible. I love that this game recreates even that loophole.
Well done! You've built a tiny time machine!
Woohoo! This is such a fun game! I haven't quite nailed it down, but it feels like you could bounce pretty fluidly from one fuse to the next platform.
Since every level seems to leave you still trying to escape the blackhole, the dialogue might make more sense if it says something like "you've managed to keep from being pulled in."
Love the artwork and general feel of the game
This is amazing! GuitarHero, Jack Sparrow, Tenacious D, killer pixel art and four AA batteries all boldly sailed into a maelstrom together!
I love shanties, chiptune, and retro gaming so this game looks like a must-have in my book! I can't wait to play it on real hardware. Fingers crossed you all end up selling digital versions too for those of us collecting on flash carts.
This was bonkers hard for me to play on a keyboard since the key layout (although standard) was flipped to what my thumbs would be doing on a handheld console. I couldn't make my brain accept the flip. But that just makes me want to play on my GB all the more!
Only complaint is the flash before the portraits appear in the dialogue boxes. I love the artwork. Once it's on screen it really sells the immersion. But the flash on every new set of words became a bit jarring when reading through a conversation or a set of instructions.
For real, watching intently for the full release!
This looks incredible! Phenomenal artwork and sprite animation! Pretty brutal gameplay to start off with, but the difficulty level is not a turn-off.
Crouch feels like it's missing. I know it's not referred to or implied anywhere, I just found myself trying to crouch the entire time I was playing.
Some of the obstacles (spikes) felt a tad out of place on the stairs. Not unfair or anything like that, but they just visually didn't "fit" to me."
Aside from that, this feels well polished. Can't wait to see (and buy) the full release!
Alright I've got to highlight some more stuff I'm seeing that I love.
The movement being grid-based instead of being just free-movement is *chef's kiss*! I love tapping left and the character moves all the way over to the next square instead of just moving over a pixel or two. Such a great feature!
The taller obstacles in the map feel so smooth. Street lights for example. Being able to walk behind them, the transparency for their sprite. With a shadow below it. It's just so well done!
I mentioned the train feeling so cool. Roll City's Plaza with the cars driving under the walkway- it's visually such good story-telling and scene-setting!
And the battle mechanics all fit together so smoothly. So well though-out. I loved when I used the vampire face on a poisoned enemy that I actually took damage instead of healed! Balanced the mechanic out and just made good sense.
And the 25 turn limit fixed the ongoing battle issue in BDP. Simple, clear and more fun.
I can't get over how good this is
What a massive improvement over BDP! And I LOVE BDP! The battle mechanics are so much smoother! The underground gang is such a fun way to start! The train is so cool! That's as far as I've got just yet but I want to play all of it!
I'm sure you're working on building more content and smoothing out the content you've got already. If you're looking for suggestions:
The constantly moving sprites are a bit odd at first. I didn't notice them after a bit, but when the game first started it struck me. I don't know what your code looks like at all, but maybe the sprite animation taking place only when the sprite's speed is > 0? Idk. I'm firing blind there.
The face switching mechanic took me a bit to figure out. I think if I hadn't already played BDP I might have assumed you couldn't use the new faces yet, because I tried all sorts of buttons in the menu before I sorted out you had to have the cursor on the face you wanted to add instead of the face you wanted to replace. Not sure what the answer is there. Realized I was being dense by the time I figured it out, but just pointing out it took some experimenting.
Same topic: I think the stock would be easier to use and may give a greater sense of mystery/discovery for the player if it started with only faces that you own (or have previously owned) and new faces were added to the stock page once you pick up that new face. Or maybe they're all greyed out or something until you've found one.
One more stock menu suggestion: Categories would make that easier to navigate. Instead of scrolling through each iteration of the attack face, just have 1, and maybe an icon showing how many attack faces you have in that "box." Select it to open and then you can scroll though the different levels of attack faces?
Last one: The two different buttons to fast print text and skip text entirely was a bit awkward (to me). I'd vote for either instant print all text and have a skip button, or instant print and then skip with the same button.
Sorry for the book. I absolutely LOVE what you've got here. Hope the suggestions come across as constructive. This project is flippin' amazing! No lie! Good luck! Looking forward to buying it!
My excitement knows no bounds! How? Why? I want to donate to you!
My childhood! I'm not weeping, you're weeping!
Serious, serious thanks! I'm anxiously working out how to get this playing on my Mac. Whether I have success or not, thank you so, so much for pouring so much work into one of my very favorite games in the whole world!
