Wolfhunter is an where you play as a hunter facing off against a werewolf, in a Pokemon-like combat sequence.
You have magic spells and single-use items at your disposal, but the wolf is very powerful. The only way to kill it is to weaken it with your attacks, then finish it off with a silver-knife (which you only have one shot at).
It is made with PICO-8, and can be played directly in your browser here.
> The motif and design of the game was based on the word "Moonshot", which was the theme of GitHub's GameOff 2020 game jam.
Gameplay
I set out to make a game loop that felt similar to the combat in Pokemon Red/Blue, which was the most popular title on the original Nintendo Gameboy.
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The characters stand opposite each other, and take turns to fight. There's a bunch of other mechanics too, like strengths/weaknesses, status effects, and switching characters.
For Wolfhunter, I copied the scene layout, the turn based fighting, and the status effects. I didn't have a chance to implement other aspects of Pokemon — so instead I doubled down on the mechanics I did implement.
I've written up a more detailed technical post in my blog here. Source code is available on GitHub.
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this is a very well thought out little game. due to the absence of growth mechanics, it feels a lot like a puzzle, but solving it by learning the proper counters has a nice rhythm to it and feels fun. good job!
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Going to play this over the holidays!
BTW I saw your character on your blog post about pico8 and immediately thought about Napoléon, so I made this version:
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Would it be OK to use it in a game? (can’t say when, many projects already, but will let you know when I make it)
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@sol: Thanks! You're right about it being more like a puzzle than an RPG at this point.
@merwork: Ha! Cute sprite. It's your creation, so you don't have to ask me to use it, but I appreciate the thought :)
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Found this and got excited when I saw that it was based on pokemon. Sadly, it doesn't work now. I hope that you can fix it, but it's ok if you don't (three years later)
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this is an awesome little game and addicting to me for some reason.
it's possible to kill the werewolf with the crossbow if it has 1 HP, not sure if this was intentional.
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