EDIT: fixed bug and added title screen
old version:
This is a shabby prototype of a combat system.
I suppose the main influences are Ocarina of Time and Golden Sun.
Maybe the over-the-shoulder perspective is heresy on a platform like this, I was thinking it's a bit like pokemon though.
I think the most interesting feature is the way your mobility is limited. your position is locked to north/south/east/west and you can move between a near/far plane, like this:
I didn't really explore this mechanic that much, but I think it could be really fun.
features:
narcoleptic skeleton with exploding legs
'mode 7' floor rendering
buggy 2D particle effects
rad glowing pentagram with authentic frame-rate drops
how to beat the guy:
keep your distance from the skeleton or he will bite you, unless he is asleep
the bat attack and the skull attack can be dodged by dashing left or right with good timing
for the earthquake attack you must counterattack, it will put him straight to sleep
Once he is asleep you can hack his legs off, after that he is helpless
* there is a jump attack as well, but it's not much use in this fight
I originally planned to make it a survival/adventure thing with player progression and backtracking and all sorts of cool stuff, but I ran out of tokens just on this! Including polygons and particle effects was definitely a mistake, I might remove all of that and carry on with it in the future.
The gameplay was supposed to revolve around the idea that each monster would need a special strategy to beat it, and you'd have to look it up in the instruction book.
There's a pretty hefty 'engine' behind it as well. I'm sort-of happy with it, but I'm still looking for ways to cut it down and looking for a better way to sequence things.
tumblr.com/blog/chocolateoutline
One of the coolest things I've seen so far on Pico-8, love it :)
Any chances to make a full game out of it, if you use multiple cartridges? You could at least move data creation into a serialized binary and maybe do some abstraction to the code, which is triggered from there? If you're in need, I have a toolkit called PicoBuild - it is mostly complete, but lacks some import functionality for sound at the moment. I use it for my RPG Tower of Rhavenna, which spans over at least three cartridges.
Yep. This is the best Pico-8 thing I've seen with my own two eyes. Incredible work.
@SunSailor I did think about multiple cartridges, I feel like if I crossed that line though the project would be never ending. That's one of the things I love about Pico-8, you learn about adapting to a limited scope.
Or you learn to overcome the limits, that's what I did with Tower of Rhavenna ;). And believe me, the token limit still hurst (8100 tokens at this moment), but it is a cool challange to bend the limit.
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