Oh my god that opening theme is a banger! Have yet to really dig into this but very excited to, and extremely pleased you decided to release a digital version. Thanks!
Nice, we played quite a bit of this. Start is quite annoying to press, maybe players could press start to start their turn instead? Although I appreciate that would slow down the game a little.
Really clean looking graphics although on a real NES with an RF connection the single pixel width lines can get a bit lost. Love the little start icon on restarting from the high score screen. I also really like the giant level counter at the bottom. Played single and two player, I enjoyed playing. Also the music select was appreciated and I thought its presentation was excellent.
Most authentic Sisyphus simulator I've played. I've completed it twice on casual - I was wondering if it would be easier the second time but I guess rolling that boulder up that hill brings a fresh set of challenges each time :)
The physics are rock solid, the graphics are great. I do think the wind is non-obvious at first but it works.
I tried to think of it as a puzzle but it looks so good I think I just wish it was more of an action platformer, and that the boulder mechanics were an enabler more than a hinderence. I totally get what you've done with it though and it's a perfect execution for it. Crazy impressive you invented a programming language and wrote a computer for it too.
The art and coding were obviously excellent on this, and this also has my favourite soundtrack out of the compo, and there were a lot of tracks as well! The presentation generally was fantastic. In terms of the game I played this both solo and with someone - Solo it didn't quite gel with me but I had a good time two player.
The below is all considered to be constructive so feel free to ignore it if you wish.
This is difficult to review, because it feels like you're really on to something here and when you glimpse it, it is spectacular, but we were discussing it while playing and it feels like something is missing from this version.
While we played, putting down lines or collecting food was fun but there was no threat for player 1 (the unicorn). It was like it lacked a sense of urgency. It felt like there was a twist on this where the unicorn was being actively chased, perhaps pacman style, and player 2 was blocking and/or helping them somehow, that would be extremely addictive.
Oh, and I really liked the block shapes as well, I thought they were great.
I look forward to seeing what you do further on this
Great palette choices and in game graphics. Loved the humour, the brain boggling part made me laugh out loud. That transition between the book-world and the real-world where you just casually throw out a full screen hblank scrolling shimmer - love how suitably underplayed it was. "Oh what, this?"
I look forward to playing more. Probably the only constructive criticisms I have are a) I do feel it gets very expansive quickly which without a map, is confusing and b) that your title screen maybe slightly undersells the game inside? But that's a nice problem to have!
There were moments where I got in to the flow of things and it felt great, I can really see what you're aiming for.
The one bit that slowed me down was the having to pick up and fling items, which felt a bit of a chore - but I could just be doing it wrong. I think maybe it felt more limited because unlike this huge movement set, it was conversely more limited what can be done in other games, where you can pick up and hold on to an item?
The great range of movement you've built would seem to me more of a natural fit if the challenge was traversal rather than trying to shepherd a key across a level, if you know what I mean. Like, hit a button in an obscure place on screen, which you need to use your gymnastics to reach.
I really enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing what comes next!
Thank you! Yeah Zoliononline knocked it out of the park with the art. The weapons are meant to be all equally viable - if you have a minute let me know if you feel I've nerfed any of them instead. And having checked out your itch.io page can I just say holy s**t do you have some cool projects! Thanks for commenting!
I've uploaded "map.bmp.zip" - its a map of the whole game. You need to collect the three crystals, which I've highlighted in orange, and exit through the central tunnel. I took the screen shots using the older version of the game but the layout is identical.
Thanks, this is great feedback! Coincidentally I've just been working on tying the enemy behaviours more closely to the animations to give them more of a cohesive feel and give the player some indication of what is about to happen. I absolutely think the levels could use more sense of direction - I made huge levels and then carved them up for the compo - I'll probably cut them down which will give me more tile combinations to work with and allow me to add greater detail.
Loved it! From a technical stand point, excellent implementation of AxRom, great clean graphics that make it clear what's going on generally.
I have lots of nitpicks with it - feel free to ignore all of these, as they are purely my thoughts and opinions:
I had a tough time controlling it - I think we spoke on the discord, and if you are going to map a or b to accelerate, it will make it a lot easier to control. Once I did this in Mesen I could really get in to the control. It was still tricky but it felt less like I was fighting a control scheme.
I felt the difficulty ramped up to an extremely high level - I'm not sure if this was on purpose, but there were two missions I just couldn't beat quite far in and I had to figure out how to freeze some memory values to stop the timer and health depletion to get further in the game. I still haven't quite completed it. I feel like some of the later stages could use a longer timer, especially those in which you are encouraged to move slowly, as it would be a nice mix-up of the formula for that to be more relaxed in terms of a timer.
The other mission I couldn't complete without a cheat just seemed to have an insane difficulty, even when my particular ship was maxed out, but this could just be me not being very good at the game! To avoid any spoilers, this was the red level.
The game also crashed on me quite a few times before I was freezing memory. I've saved some savestates of when it happened if you wanted them, let me know.
I found the movement patterns and constant respawning of the bots (the triangle like enemies moving in cardinal directions) a little unfair and not particularly fun - I don't see a good strategy for defeating them or avoiding them given how quickly they move and respawn.
Finally, there seems to be a min-maxing issue with the ships - one of them seems to be much more useful then the others, and one is not very useful later in the game. They also cap quite quickly, which is useful in a way as you reset them to level 1 on destruction, but also means they never get particularly powerful. Some more pronounced variation between them and possibly more of a ramp up in terms of power acquired might be good, with less resetting of power levels possibly.
I thought this was great and really enjoyed it, thanks for making it!
Thanks! I've been checking yours out too - wow, those graphics, animations and just general presentation on yours, it makes everything fit together so nicely!
