A game about escaping a dungeon, one room at a time.
Arrow keys to move and aim
z/c jump
x/v fire(ball)
Tips
- Progress is saved whenever you enter a new room or defeat a boss, so if you get stuck you can come back later
- You can reset the current room, toggle music, or reset your whole progress from the menu (press p or enter)
- You can hold x, press the arrow keys to aim your fireball, then release x to shoot
- You may find a room too difficult to beat right now. Please take a break and come back - I know you can do it!
Features
- 24 carefully designed rooms to overcome, with
- 8 types of enemies and obstacles, and
- 3 unique boss fights
- All original sprites, levels, music, sfx (and code)
Mini devlog
This is my first completed pico-8 game.
About a year ago I decided to make a simple platformer built around shooting fireballs.
I'm the kind of person who has trouble finishing projects, so you already know I dropped it after a while to work on something else.
A few months ago I decided to revisit the game with the goal of finishing it no matter what.
This took a lot of time, way more than I expected!
I ran into major problems when I encountered the token limit, and had to do some massive refactoring.
In the end I still had to do a lot of the typical tricks (multiple assignments, hardcoding stuff, etc) to keep the token count down, which was kind of frustrating.
This did force me to reduce scope and actually finish the game though.
I had several friends playtest the game during development, which allowed me to iterate on the mechanics and levels.
I wanted the game to feel rather challenging for the average player, but always fair and possible to overcome.
I hope some of you find it fun :)
If you find the game too easy, please play on mobile for more of a challenge (not a joke)
Excellent! It strikes a good balance between feeling hopelessly difficult at times and being much easier once the best approach is determined. Love the bosses.
As someone else who has trouble finishing projects, congrats!
Amazing! I would suggest improving the platforming physics, maybe add some coyote time and jump buffering, or even variable jump height.
im really stuck ... how do you get through the room with 3 bats , three archers and the bouncing frog ? - its a few rooms after the 2nd boss ... im just getting killed by the frog most of the time , mostly after ive hit it once and it goes mental !
great game and pretty hard :)
Thank you all for the kind words.
@binaryeye I am very glad to hear this feedback.
@kellercode Maybe for the next game :)
@bigjus I have no doubt you can beat it! Maybe you can try a different strategy.
ive tried everything i can think of ! hoping for a walkthrough to solve it for me ...
Very fun but really hard game (I got about half-way through playing on a phone though [also the first time without reading the comment to play the game on mobile for an extra challenge], then I gave up on that and used a computer)!
I'm stuck on the final boss, its really hard, and there isn't any real way to know how far I've gotten, my best is 4 (maybe 5?) hits. In that room the lack of coyote time is brutal, especially because you're glancing at the other side of the screen sometimes to see the wizard. It also basically locks you in for death when it does a bunch bats in a row. A big issue with the boss is that you can't compensate for the luck, basically the whole fight is based on luck and not falling into spikes (hard to do with locked jump height and no coyote time)
@bigjus yeah, thats really hard, I just walked to the edge when an archer is, spammed fire 3 times to kill it, moved out of the arcing projectile, kill a bat or two if they come that way, then jump through the water, lure the frog, shoot up and get out of there quick so it doesn't run into me, and its pretty simple from there.
Anyway, really fun game (I loved the second boss fight, it was really cool aesthetically and fun to play), amazing for your first game in pico-8!
Good game, @nunodasneves. I would add that it would be good if you could jump through a regular hollow platform not just going UP but DOWN as well as platformers have done in the past.
Game gives me time to think about what to do and starts out quite easy so I'm liking this a lot. Gold star work !
Phew! after soo many tries, finally I could complete this game.
The knight boss was tricky until I figured out its pattern and weakness. The hunter is easier than the knight provided you can keep your distance. The final boss was hard but I was lucky he placed himself in perfect spots.
Great short game nonetheless!
Couple features gave me idea on my game or my next boss ;).
This level gave me a lot of trouble. I could get through the lowest area about half the time.
I got through the final boss eventually, but it felt more like luck than skill.
I agree with @Munchkin that platforming this precise really needs coyote time.
Still, good puzzle platformer that really makes you think, and some really thoughtful enemy patterns and ways they respond to the player.
@Munchkin @Cowirrie thank you for playing - I hear you on the final boss fight feeling too luck-based. Sorry about that, I'm considering tweaking it to feel more fair.
I won't be convinced to add coyote-time, not for this game. I agree it would make the final boss more manageable. The problem is, all the levels are balanced around the current platforming mechanics and I'm certain I would have to rework a few if I added coyote time.
very fun puzzle platforer and very nice art! will play this on my handheld :)
Wow I really, really enjoy challenging platformers with interesting mechanics. This one defintely landed on my heart. Not to mention the control feels good and responsive
it turned out well, in general it is an interesting process)
Oh that is much harder than I expected. Even though I found some of the level are kind of frustrating, I found myself yelled at the screen the most when I missed my jump few frames right from the edge
I highly recommend implementing coyote time && jump buffer in this game. That will make the whole platforming experience much more fluid and the hard level design will be less frustarting for an average player.
Otherwise incredible work! There so much content (bunch of levels, 3 bosses) packed in this little cart!
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