itch.io

It's a neat little game, although the goal of it is a bit confusing, and could perhaps use some UI to show the player their goal.

For example, let's say there were 4 plans hidden throughout the level, and the player needs to collect 0/3 of the 4. That would immediately tell the player what they're after, and add a bit more exploration to it. As I sort of spent my whole time just walking around, unsure what I was even looking for.

The goal is to remove as much as you can in the time limit. If you hit 100% cleared you get a large point bonus - damage done in the process.

100% doesn't require you to get rid of all the orange, just most, although to be fair the difficulty might have been overtuned a bit since I had it made difficult to fully clear for myself, an experienced artist.. oops.

Glad you enjoyed it though!

Seems interesting enough, so I'll go over a bit of the process behind our game, Skávo, from my perspective. I, as the pixel artist went into this knowing I wanted to try some kind of Roman or Greek style, because I'd never done it before specifically, and it seemed like a fun thing to try.  As the extra challenges were announced, I was originally thinking some kind of stealthy arcade thing set around the Antonine Plague. Despite not knowing about germs, communal diseases and quarantines (although they were not called that yet) were understood to an extent (although the full extent is somewhat debated).

And of course as a pixel artist who has played around with limited palettes before, I had to take the palette challenge. In the end I felt the orange set the mood best, so I went with that.

But as the actual theme of "Take Care" was announced, the 3 of us threw around some other ideas until "Archeology" came up, and with taking care of fragile artifacts as a core game loop. We were all on board for it, and then discussed a few possible ideas for the digging phase, and it was close between Minesweeper, and Picross, but we ultimately went with a Minesweeper top down style.

We were also considering some kind of third translation phase, where you collected enough artifacts and had to piece together some kind of puzzle to translate something, but it was a bit too much for a 72 hour jam, so it was cut in order to better refine what we already had.

Some of these are a bit of a stretch, but that's the setup for how we tried to meet the various challenges.

Take Care: Taking care not to break delicate artifacts as you excavate them.

CGA 4 Colours: With one small exception, the entire game is built out of a CGA approved 4 colour palette.

History: We're digging up Ancient Greek Relics here! Everything you dig up is based off an actual Greek Relic (although very pixelly and simplistic).

Translation: The game uses Greek Numerals which you have to 'translate' in your head to use as a clue. Also the Title "Skávo" is Greek for Dig.

Social Distancing: You're out there digging up relics alone, doesn't get more distancing than that! (Ok we didn't really do this one at all).

Multiplayer: Obviously this was meant as an online Co-op thing to promote Core. But with the simple inclusion of a scoring system, and a high score screen, there is a bit of pseudo multiplayer in the form of friendly competition. After the jam ends, might even be cool to update the in game scores with what people in the comments have gotten!

All in all, while not some major game or anything, I'm really happy with how our 72 Hour Project came out. Thanks to having a small and experienced team, we were able to make a fun little game, and if you'd like to check it out, you can over at https://itch.io/jam/extra-credits-game-jam-6/rate/739112 

Edit: some grammar typos, whoops.

It's interesting to see how other people used the same palette! Overall it's neat little idea, if a bit difficult to actually play at some points (cat boss is tough). The idea itself would probably work better as either untimed puzzles so you can actually plan out the movement of both birds, or as actual multiplayer. Anyways, now I'm off to let me brain recover.

Ahh you're right, in retrospect a sound there does seem kind of obvious. Just one of those things we missed in the rush. Glad you enjoyed the game though!

Really nice use of dithering to get the most out of the limited palette! And the tutorial was concise showing me everything I needed without overstaying its welcome. My only real complaint is the Blue Flower's ability feels kinda lackluster. Maybe if the bullets he reflected became purple and hurt enemies, or he could push stuff back further to buy more time when surrounded.