Oblivion Eve
A roguelike action-platformer where you use upgradeable weapons to combo powerful enemies to their doom!
Overcome tough fights, platforming challenges, puzzles, and more in your effort to free the titan who is incarcerated in the shifting prison's depths.
Gameplay Overview
Each time you venture into the shifting prison, the layout of the rooms will be randomized. And there's no map to guide your way, either - you'll need to do your best to navigate as the prison itself fights against you - by moving rooms, making you double back on yourself, and putting powerful enemies in your path.
At the heart of the prison lies an enchained titan, who will fight against your every attempt to free them. For each of the four gems you destroy, you'll break one of the chains binding them. Find the titan four times, shatter all four chains to fully liberate them, and claim victory!
And remember to use your ABC's: Always Be Comboing!
Advanced Overview
Controls
Arrow Keys: Move Character, Move Menu Selection
🅾️ (Z): Jump, Choose Menu Selection
❎ (X): Attack, Previous Menu
Enter: Pause Menu
Credits
Coding, Sprites, Design: SmartAlloc
Music: extar
Sound Effects: Munchkin
Uses thisismypassword's shrink08 minifier
Thanks to bikibird, freds72, heracleum, josiah winslow, mazzetip, merwok, miss mouse, p01, pancelor, smalltestaccount, smellyfishtiks, and thisismypassword for tons of help throughout the development process.
Additional thanks to merwok, ohhcurtains, redlink, rey k, spiderware, and yokoboko for playtesting and feedback.
Changelog
1.0.0: Initial release
1.0.1: Small bug fixes and balance changes
1.0.2: Fixed issue where the same lore page could be picked up multiple times
1.0.3: Ultimates scale better at higher combos, replaced some rooms, added option to clear game data, fixed issue where a some graphics were partially cut off, fixed issue where game would crash when resetting cart during a run
1.0.4: Fixed issue where you could obtain the last two lore entries early, fixed issue with music resuming after ultimates, reworded tutorial text for clarity
1.0.5: Updated music, lowered boss health, buffed damage reduction upgrade, increased axe smash attack cooldown, decreased axe damage
1.0.6: Made it so the sword and spear side strong attacks have a better angle, increased boss laser size, replaced that annoying attack where a boss pulls a hammer from below
1.1.0: Added a new difficulty 'Oblivion'. Increased the damage of the axe while lowering its range, and buffed the size of the spear. Rebalanced enemies and bosses across the board to make the game more balanced and fun.
Download
For players who want to run the game offline or on a console, the itch.io page has a download for all the carts.
Feel free to share your high scores in the comments below!
High Scores:
- Myth: 21686
- Arrito: 21172
- noiD_on_scratch: 17959
Best Times:
- Arrito: 2:46
- Potater Hands: 4:56
- notsomeone: 5:54
Wow! Great game. I love all the different weapon options!
WOW, utterly fantastic! Great gameplay and feel, amazing effects, beautiful UI, outstanding attention in every little detail, and best of all it's just plain fun. This sets a new standard for PICO-8 games. Bravo!
This is now my favorite pico-8 game. The level of detail, captivating effects, addictive gameplay, and beautiful pixel art are what truly stand out for me. I had the privilege of playing a beta version, and it's evident that the game is now even more polished and enjoyable. Outstanding work!
Highly recommended!
Tried the tutorial on mobile and couldn't pass the heavy attack part. Will retry later on computer. Looks awesome so far.
✨ Absolutely fantastic ⭐🧡
Best effects I've seen so far, subtle flicker is working great even in webplayer!
Absolutely amazing, so glad I was able to contribute a little bit to this.
Now time to eventually beat it lol, this is a pretty tough game, but I know I shall one day conquer it!
I just do not believe it is possible...
It's too incredible!
How?!
This is a fantastic production on all fronts.
Combat and movement is as intricate as it needs to be, and with only two buttons! The volleyball-style combo system adds an interesting timing dynamic, and I appreciate how it encourages mixing up attacks. In the late game, rushing down enemies to quell their bullet spam is frantic fun.
In my few runs so far, I've mostly valued meter gain over other upgrades. Being able to readily full blast a row of enemies has great impact, and it's always useful against bosses. I haven't experimented much with different weapons yet, but it should be enjoyable to explore the variety there.
Thank you for sharing this excellent creation!
First victory:
The animations looks incredible! Along with some in-depth mechanics and gameplay too. Very impressive!
Amazing game the was worth all the wait! One could forget that this was made all inside our cozy little engine!
Combat is tight and exciting, my brain forgets half the options I have, note even speaking about thinking in combos yet. Ultimate is super satisfying, transitions are really neat, it just hits every point you want perfectly. Now to explore it even further beyond!
The controls on this game are super tight. Really well done.
You can indeed wavedash, but since the dash and jump are bound to the same button, it's a bit tricky. Wavelanding is significantly easier. It'll be clear when perform either, because you'll slide along a platform as if you were dashing, but the dash particles will be coming from a diagonal direction.
It doesn't really have much utility ever since I added grounded dashes though, because you can freely attack during those, they provide more distance, and they're easier to perform.
And unfortunately due to the dash cooldown, you can't repeatedly wavedash, significantly limiting their use to approach and quickly retreat.
Pretty sick. i do feel like performing a dash is a bit unresponsive at times either because you instead drop from platforms or do a wall jump with the same input, tough for only one button. The way you perform heavy attacks is cool though, kinda similar to Smash Bros, it feels strong
Loved the game! Tho I runned into a bug really early in the game. I was using a sword in medium difficulty and I found an axe upgrade in the ground. When I took it and selected the perk, I was trapped by invisible walls, as shown in this SS: 
When I tried rebooting the cart, I got an error: 
I don't know what happened, maybe the fact I was using Firefox mobile? I hope it is something easy to fix!
Thanks, @laurorual. Those invisible walls were actually intentional, it was part of the puzzle used to get to that power-up. But I feel it's too confusing to the player, because they don't fit the rest of the game, so it's probably for the best I remove that room entirely.
The reboot crash is... very much not intentional lol. Really confusing too, no idea why it only occurs on the bbs, but not in my test environment, or standalone runtimes. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!
The combat and animation in this is completely off the scale. I love how weird the setting and story is too. So proud to have been able to contribute the music to this!
I have been wanting to write a comment for a while now, but it is hard to express how well this game is made. I didn't even know it was possible to have so many different moves with so little available buttons while still keeping them all fairly responsive.
@extar did a great job with the music too. I am glad his video made me check out this game. I mostly have been avoiding action platformers so far, but the "weird setting" looked a bit too interesting to pass.
Spoonfeeding the story works so well. Once it clicks what your role in the story is, it is so satisfying and weirdly motivating to keep going.
The transition to the upgrade menu is the best one I have ever seen, love the sound effect on that too. The artwork in general is amazing.
But I do wonder why, if the protagonist can regenerate her body anyways, why not regrow some arms?
As your most loyal touch screen player, this game is amazing. Beaten the Hard difficulty, onto the next one.
Also I want to know, will there be another entry in the series? The book clearly says 1:X, meaning there can be another book? I know, lore wise the game’s over, The God Of Death clearly is left alone… but look, I think with the sinner dead, the concept of life should be free for The God of Death to take..? Since, I guess, maybe the sinner kept their concept of life on them I guess??
5 reasons why 4th crystal is bullshit and should be nerfed:
- Knifes are unfair to dodge and require accurate timing.
- Down spawning hammer is unfair to dodge and barely readable
- Splintering bullets with spear are unfair to dodge.
- Knife.
- Too much health for the boss, the fight becomes too much with anything but the axe.
Bonus: RNG for good attack patterns
Thanks for the compliments and feedback everybody!
@Doriencey You know, that's a fantastic point. I'll say it's because when the deities removed their arms, the existence of their arms was completely extinguished. Instead of of leaving a wound behind, it was as if their arms never existed at all. Betcha they could theoretically use prosthetics, though.
@randomgoober Wait, you've been beating Hard on a touchscreen? That's insane! You should share your best score; you might even have beaten my high score!
There's definitely room for a sequel, and you're right that there's nothing stopping them from remaking life anew! I've begun working on my next game, which builds upon the gameplay of this one, but as a fully fledged metroidvania. It's up in the air whether it continues the story, though!
That's good to hear, I was actually worried that the final boss was too easy. I feel that the knives requiring accurate timing are exactly why they're not bullshit - they always have the exact same pattern, it's simply a skill check to dodge through them. Alternately, you can just chill in the corner for the attack to end - it doesn't hit the bottom corners of the arena.
Yeaaah I agree about the hammer though, it's not very telegraphed if you're on the bottom floor. If you see the boss end their 'preparing' triangle animation, but no weapons spawn, chances are there's a hammer coming from below. Could be better though, I'll think on how to rework it, and will likely shave some health off the 4th crystal as well.
@Angel17 Thanks buddy, I'm glad our bot overlords approve of my game as well lmao.
Any idea why my lore unlocks aren't being saved long-term? I can reload the page, or close it and reopen in another tab, and they're still there, but if I close and come back the next day, gone.
@PhasmaFelis @Hell_Cat I'm so sorry to hear this, I'm not sure what might have caused it. Sounds like it might either be a problem with either the cookies stored in your browser (which is where the save data is located) or maybe this site changed how it saved data for some reason, which resulted in old save files getting erased?
I've tried restarting my browser and my computer, but my save data is still around. I'll try coming back tomorrow and seeing if I can replicate the issue, but I'm not sure it's on the game's side. Is it just lore that's missing, or did your high scores vanish as well?
@SmartAlloc It was both lore and my high scores. I was at around page 12 on lore and a little over 4000 in high score.
Man, that makes it less likely to be a problem with the game, since those two are stored separately. A shame, a problem with the game would have been easier to fix. I'll try to look into it all that same, apologies again.
Oh wow this is very cool
I am not very good at it but I had a real good time losing
Absolutely fantastic !
I wish they were a way to choose to not trade transformation for health when picking up upgrade item.
Could we get downloads for all the carts accessed by load()? This would make it easier to put play offline because currently Pico 8 only downloads each cart to pico-8/bbs/carts when they need to be accessed.
Good call. I've added it as an additional download on https://smartalloc.itch.io/oblivion-eve.
Enjoy!
@Johan.win I'm afraid not, but you're free to ask me about specific techniques I used to create the game. I'm easiest to reach out to on the Pico-8 Discord!
My best runs yet, tryna clear hard diff, but it’s just ain’t it, the 4th crystal gives me no breathin room..
side note: I’m a touch screen user
Best run today, got to crystal 4.
The 4th crystal just needs to be nerfed, it’s pure rng to get good attack patterns. The boss just spams the worst attacks possible combined with small bouncy bullets to absolutely destroys you.
I don’t think the extreme difficulty is even possible at this point.
It's a very cool game. For me even the best for Pico 8 I've ever seen. I like combo based games. It's not that hard to play on mobile, although without ability to "feel" the virtual d-pad, I sometimes screw up the direction of dash. But it's still not that bad, although again, I am playing on normal difficulty for now. Pixel art is very good, animations too, same as sounds and music. I wonder how much better this game would become without limitations of Pico 8.
This is truly an amazing game.
Undoubtedly, this is the best game on the Pico 8, let alone other systems. I would love to see a sequel or a prequel or any game with the same system. I just wish that there was more content on this. I am actively trying to introduce more people to it. The only possible downside I can think of is the singular F word in the first Apocrypha. It would be a nearly perfect game otherwise.
@SmartAlloc, if you could change that one thing, this game would go down, in my heart, as the best platformer that I have ever heard of, let alone played.
@Sidus_Abeicito naaah dawg the F word’s fine, it just adds a lil comedy to the game that’s present throughout the story
I feel like it would also be just as funny, if not funnier, if it was censored is such a way of: Frick, Flippity Flap, or any of the related ones. It is god after all so it seems like god would censor themselves.
@Sidus_Abeicito I'm glad to hear how much you're enjoying the game! Sorry about that F word; it's very much meant for shock value, and to draw people into reading the rest of the lore.
I'll be sure not to rely on such coarse humor in my follow-up game, which takes itself much more seriously. If you like this game's system, wait until you see how it's built upon in the spiritual sequel!
@randomgoober I removed that rising hammer move from the bosses, as that was the only attack I felt was genuinely unfair. Between that and lowering the boss's health, I'm hoping it makes the experience more fair! I'm able to consistently beat the final boss on the hardest difficulty with no upgrades, so I hope you're able to do the same on your harder touchscreen setup.
@SmartAlloc thanks! I’ll try out this patch as soon as I get some free time to attempt it, I’ll be sure to post my progress on it soon
Finally managed to beat normal difficulty on touch controls, felt pretty good. I’ll try hard difficulty now.
Tbh decreasing the 4th crystal’s health made it actually bearable with knife/spear, since spear was just unbearable to use, and knife had laughable damage. But this just fixed all the issues those weapons had, made em move up in my weapon tier list too. I might post the weapon tier list later.
Is this a leftover from the "invisible wall room" or is intentional that some pickup are unreachable ?
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