i really wonder how did you get the idea for this game xd

nice mechanics - good use of minimalist graphics 👌

I got up to 9 hearts! Fun puzzle game that forces you think - how to manage your hearts, most efficient way to get the next talisman, etc.

Realy exciting game, missed only two popes. Thank you for great gaming experience.

Great game!

Adam's doing the Lord's work, bringing the feel of 2009 Flash games to the Pico-8 community single-handedly

Metroidvania puzzle, nice !
Felt outsmarted when my 1st 20 mn run was not at 100%, so I did a second one. That was sneaky ;)

Gameplay felt like a puzzlescript.
If you don't mind, I may remake this game as puzzlescript one day, like I did for
go figure!
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=153205#p
quantum maze
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=156948#p
and Trichromat
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=158533#p

If you're OK with it, please tell me what you'd like for the credits.

sorry i meant to reply to this sooner! extremely ok with a puzzlescript remake, go hams. if there's a way to just link to this BBS post as the credits that would be dope, otherwise i'm fine with "Adam Atomic" or "Adam Saltsman"!

Did anyone find the Daywalker ending yet?

I found two endings : 1 st run by getting to the eastern room, and 2nd run by escaping north thanks to having full max health.
Is there a third ending ?

nope thats both of em!! awesome :)

@Adam Atomic
I made a playable WIP here :
https://auroriax.github.io/PuzzleScript/play.html?p=b6053cb20fdef0a18adb8deeb2ae079b
It's still missing sound, game over stats, endings, and still needs some fixing for the cross and super cross logic :

Problem is I'm unsure what the correct behavior is supposed to be :
in room 2, I'm missing the blue super crosses behind the priest and super priest. So it seems they should be able to shoot through each-other and their super-crosses.
in room 3, I'm missing the simple crosses behind the priest in the middle, so there again, it seems they should be able to shoot through each-other, yet in room 7, the priest that shares a cross and shoots horizontally has his beam stopped somewhere somehow... (no crosses where I put the white question marks).
Could you explain what the underlying intended logic is, please ?

For the stats, rather than dealing with percentages on a game engine that doesn't even have numbers, I intend to add a visual inventory of sorts somewhere.
This could be

• on the bottom of the screen, just like the health meter in the top
• in the black walled area in the starting screen
• in the garden area near the secret exit (maybe turn it into a graveyard and add a tombstone each time you kill someone for example)
• in the last screen, outside the walls
  What do you think would be best ?

So far, I'm trying to be as accurate to the original as possible, but there are a lot of possible changes :

undo : I disabled undo and implemented checkpoints when getting talismans for conformity reasons, but could enable it just by removing "noundo" from the header section. That makes the game a lot easier and stress free, but less strategic, and removes all the tension related to low health.

graphics : I didn't want to downscale everything to the 5px x 5px of vanilla puzzlescript, so I'm using your 8 x 8 tiles and pico-8 palette atm, and PuzzlescriptPlus that allows other resolutions that 5 x 5, but I could use vector graphics or any other pixel resolution or palette if an artist is interested. Maybe a round bubbly chibi look would be cool for full screen PC.

@RealShadowCaster yooo this is dope... thoughts / ideas:

• undo: i would say go with whatever feels right tbh. i initially only DIDNT do undo because SQ used it and i wanted to try something different, but i agree, i think the talisman checkpoints work well for the health tension!

• stats location: last screen outside walls sounds most promising to me but i dont have a super strong opinion

• cross ray logic: cross rays can go through most things that aren't walls, including priests and other items like crosses and garlic. HOWEVER, cross tiles will not appear on blood stains. Bloodstains don't block the ray, but they create a safe space for vamp to stand on

@Adam Atomic
I changed the beam logic and am now 99% in conformity with your game.
The only place it's not in line is with the shared cross :
I have a horizontal beam going through all the crosses and into the next screen, witch seems in line with the logic description you posted, and that beam is missing in the pico-8 version.
Witch one is the correct one ? If it's the pico-8 logic, could you please detail a bit more ?
Other minor question : does wood and/or wood debris stop beams ?

I loved this :) well done!

@RealShadowCaster

wood + debris: i THINK wood stops beams and debris does not, altho there are maybe not any places in the level design where that happens, because standing on wood bits doesn't "feel" quite right. i think it means you can cause something weird or annoying to happen at the one south door in the big-cross-room tho

that weird horizontal beam: omg ok i think i know whats happening. Cross sharing was being really finicky and since it was a 2 day project i just said "nah i will not bother" and removed (i thought) all the cross sharing bits in the level designs. SO. i believe what is happening in pico8 is when it scans and finds a cross, it checks to see if that cross has a pope, and it checks up and down first. as soon as it finds a pope, it calculates the ray, and bails to the next pope-item

since that last little pope in line was a late add, i simply did not notice that he was getting leapfrogged in the cross-pope assignment scan because he didn't affect the beam behaviors

Finished the

PS+ version of Vampires vs pope army !

(sound, inventory on last screen, and the two endings)
It can be played here :
https://auroriax.github.io/PuzzleScript/play.html?p=1ab857a9a0b13ef853eb6d8efbd6e8b4

Only regret is it feels like playing a pico-8 game.
If an artist wants to redraw the tiles in vector format, please tell.

nicely done 👏👏👏👏

@Adam Atomic thank you. The only game logic difference between the two is the horizontal beam from the shared cross. I've tested the game a lot, and found that you can soft-lock yourself with inescapable checkpoints, but it takes intentional efforts and planning to do it and therefore don't think it's a big deal.
Only place I see it could happen by accident is this way :