So, I just made a new Gameboy Color game, Depths of Europa:
Depths of Europ (on itch.io)
You can play it in your browser or download the rom and play it in your emulator/flashcart of choice.
It's a complete little metroidvania and also a prequel/demo for the full game, which I'm currently running a Kickstarter for:
Depths of Europa Kickstarter
The demo takes maybe half an hour to an hour to 100%, and has an automap, speedrunner mode and the usual modern niceties.
Hope some of you enjoy it!
Very cool. I have no nostalgia for the GBC, so I'm probably the wrong audience, but I enjoyed how faithfully rendered it all is, from the graphics to the audio. The gamepad working automatically was a huge plus - I get why you don't use the analogue sticks, but the option would be nice (especially for changing direction when wall jumping). It's neat! I hope the full game's a success!
This is really cool, love the music. The only gripe I have is that you cannot crouch, maybe limitation of the GB engine?
If you want, you can download the rom and play it in a dedicated gameboy emulator - you could set that up to use analog sticks if you prefer that.The gamepad working automatically was a huge plus - I get why you don't use the analogue sticks, but the option would be nice (especially for changing direction when wall jumping).
No, I just didn't implement it - I made sure your default standing shot would hit anything in the 2 8x8 blocks closest to the ground, so you don't strictly need to.The only gripe I have is that you cannot crouch, maybe limitation of the GB engine?
I'm still evaluating whether I want to add crouching as well as aiming vertically to the full game.
I didn't play it for long because I had to play with the keyboard this time, and it didn't feel good at all. No worries though, I'm fairly sure that it would have been a totally different experience with the gamepad. Like Sulphur, I have no nostalgia for the Gameboy, but I did like what I saw and heard in Depths of Europa. I could imagine this being fun on an actual Gameboy and its smaller display, but even on my PC screen it was alright.
Aiming vertically is definitely one thing that I was missing in your game, but implementing it at this point might of course mess up your level design. Crouching too would spice up the gameplay a bit, but again, you'd probably have to make some big changes, and in a game like this it might be better to just keep things simple. Not that I've ever played anything on Gameboy.
Best of luck with the Kickstarter campaign, I truly hope that you reach the goal there.
I only played for a few minutes, but I think the movement felt great, even on a keyboard. I liked the backgrounds; they reminded me a bit of Prey and gave a good sense of place. I did miss the ability to crouch. I think I'd rather have the floor-crawling enemies go under the standing shot so that you're forced to crouch to shoot them. Aiming up and down via the shoulder buttons (like in Super Metroid) would be good, too, but don't let me tell you how to design your game. It's impressive how much you've racked up in the Kickstarter so far but not too surprising given the quality of the demo!
Yeah I think keyboard controls feel good as well. Crouching would be nice. Especially since you can press down and jump to drop down it'd be nice to have a visual indicator that you're actually pressing down. And since it's such a mechanically simple game anyway, adding that little bit of complexity of having to crouch to shoot low enemies of dodge high bullets would be good I think. (then again, I assume you're going to be introducing more complexity in the form of upgrades later on and maybe having a crouch would just muddle things. This whole thing is quite well put together so I'm gonna assume you know what you're doing!)
Good luck with the KS!
I backed it. It's amazing that you can manufacture custom Gameboy Color carts nowadays.
Heh, remember that while you may be playing with a modern gamepad, it's a real Gameboy Color game - I only have access to A, B, Start, Select and the D-pad.Originally Posted by Tomi
The button limitation has had a significant impact on the overall design - if I had more buttons, dash would be on one of those, rather than a selectable ability.
I'm curious: would something like a double press to dash be feasible on the Gameboy Color controls? Or are the button presses not checked frequently enough to make this feasible? (Not saying that you should do this or that it would play well, I'm just wondering if double press and longer press can even be used reasonably.)
Oh, I was thinking of Gameboy Advance I guess. Yeah, you gotta keep it authentic!
It's entirely doable, but I've never been a big fan of double tap controls - that's why I made dash a selectable ability.
The full game will have additional movement controls - I'm almost certainly going to add crouching and some amount of vertical aiming, I just need to make sure it's all balanced for gameplay.
Your third item pickup is a "plasma whip", which will also eventually get a grapple upgrade.
But I agree the button limitation is... limiting. I'd love to create dash puzzles that required dashing into a grapple into a wall jump, but the current setup would kinda prohibit that as grapple and dash have to be toggled between.
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