Play game
Pumpkin Patch King and the Cursed Kingdom's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| NES Feel | #11 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Overall | #36 | 3.595 | 3.595 |
| Gameplay | #42 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Graphics | #46 | 3.524 | 3.524 |
| Audio | #57 | 3.095 | 3.095 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Fun game! I think the last dungeon could maybe be a bit shorter, as the puzzle to it mostly boiled down to 'checking if a path is open, if not, push button and come back'
Movement was pretty stiff, true to Zelda 1 from what I recall, but I'd prefer if it wasn't quite so committal.
Generally the boss design seemed fine, I liked the first boss the best, but the second one I could not seem to find a way to move to not get hit by the three directional attack, the top left corner seemed the best bet, but I'm not fast enough to dodge the last wave. I don't think I had much curse either, and I don't think it could be reflected. Always got hit at least once, but maybe I just missed something about it. Was able to damage race the boss down so it didn't end my run at least.
The overworld was cool, could do with something to let the player know where they have or haven't been. Almost missed the last dungeon thinking that I had already swam to all the unique zones there, but was double checking due to paranoia (and generally knowing my sense of direction is pretty poor.
The shovel was cool enjoyed being able to use it against the pit enemies, I think the reflect could be used a bit more for puzzles, and would generally like the other tools to see more use, but there's a lot here for the time given, so I'm not surprised some didn't see as much repeated use later. (perhaps an invulnerable enemy you need to blow into a pit with the wind wand for example?) Wasn't a fan of how you needed to dig to find stairs sometimes but would be forced to take damage when enemies came out. Maybe a brief period before they start moving would be nice? Otherwise it's a bit of a health check, and you lose more than you gain from the ones that had health pickups instead. For someone like me that likes to be fairly thorough, I had to dig them all to know if I was missing anything anyways.
The curse mechanic was interesting, but I didn't feel the urge to make use of it, especially when the character is already not particularly fast. I'd rather just take less damage and learn the fights better with more leniency towards getting hit. Maybe the kind of thing that'd appeal more to me on repeated playthroughs.
Sound design could have been a bit punchier, some more sounds for enemies and item usage would go a long way in improving the feel of the game.
Apologies if I'm critiquing too much, it was still a fun adventure, and kept me going all the way through to the end. Strong base to a game and very impressive for the two weeks to make all of this.
Controls don't even work in both versions of the game, so i can't play this((
Hi! I'm sorry to hear the controls aren't working for you. Are you using keyboard or controller? The game only supports XInput controllers, so it may not work if you are using a different kind of gamepad. If you are using keyboard, make sure you do not click in the game window after it has loaded in web. I hope you get to play!
i tried everything ya told me to try but still no response. Im stuck at the title screen
THE KINGDOM HAS BEEN SAVED!
The exploration part of the game is amazing, the combat part controls well and the boss fights perfectly fit so I had a lot of fun playing the game. The music has a nice crafted feel and like everything else in the game you have no doubt it could work as well on a console.
The game would benefit from some extra sound feedback for various thing. Also I always struggled whenever I wanted to go through a small path behind two tiles.
Thanks for sharing!
Nice Zelda clone! I thought the dungeon design was strong, but I struggled a bit with the controls where it felt like my player character would sometimes keep moving in the same direction I was headed even after I'd changed my input for a few moments.
I got softlocked in the first dungeon in one of the enemy rooms because the doors didn't open after I killed them all, but I appreciate how well you captured the spirit of Zelda NES!
hi! Is it the room with the two pinwheels on the left side? If so, you are meant to use the item you receive in that room to activate those pinwheels and open the doors. If it is a different issue, I would love more information so that i can fix it!! Thanks for playing!
I think it was that room! I'll try again later and let you know how it goes!
Great game with nice graphics and music. I feel the NES vibe. I just don't understand the curse bar but the game was fun to play :)
I enjoyed that a lot, played it all in one sitting. Was surprised the game supports saving when I got back to the titlescreen. My biggest nitpick is that the stage 2 boss is a bit hard to read on whether you're hitting him or not. There is some pretty clever design here though. Great work!
Thank you! I will ensure the dungeon 2 boss has a more readable damage animation in the future!
Pretty nice work, like the little pumpkin dude. I found one dungeon and the boss battle had an interesting design, but it takes way too many hits and kills me in 3, so I gave up eventually. The curse mechanic is an interesting idea, but making the character really slow is maybe not the most ideal effect for it, cause it's more frustrating than anything and I'd rather just die quickly and try again. Graphics are simple, but that gives it that intriguing early NES era feel. Just the large detailed HUD elements take away from it a bit.
thanks for the detailed feedback! I’ll look into tweaking the curse mechanic to make it feel a bit more fair/worthwhile tradeoff.
Cute! Has a Zelda look to it, with a surprising amount of content for a jam game. I managed to beat the boss in the dungeon at the top of the mountain, but it took a lot of effort.
Enjoyed the wind staff item, but I was hoping it would do more to that dungeon’s boss
After that I found the curse potion, which I was interested to test the mechanic but wasn’t noticing the benefit of the trade-off.
I had died a few times getting to that point, and my journey had ended when I got locked into that scene with the purple water in the bottom right, same as another commenter. I was stuck in that exact spot, approaching from the north.
Great vibes, it was interesting to explore, I had fun running around as the pumpkin patch king!
Thanks for the kind words:) The bosses HP will be tweaked in future versions, I struggled to find a sweet spot that made the bosses hard enough when at the max curse level, so some of them take quite some effort to defeat. I am sorry about the collision with the cursed water area, the game does save your data, so it is possible to use the pause menu (select button) to quit to the menu and respawn in an unstuck location, but i will be fixing this collision problem in a future patch. Thanks for playing!
This was a nice zelda like I was surprised how much you got in this game a full world and multiple dungeons too. I was so happy to unlock the shovel to kill the mole enemies I died a lot to them. Good game really did feel like an NES game.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you like the shovel, it’s my favorite item for sure.
Just like Zelda! I like your map design & puzzles. I mostly explored the west side and managed to get the wand, shovel, and a curse potion. For the boss fight at the top of the mountain, I wasn't sure if I was actually doing any damage to the boss. It took a lot of hits to kill him. (and then I realized that I think the wand wasn't actually doing any damage and it is only for activating stones).
The enemy movement is very reminiscent of Zelda too. The only maybe bugs I noticed were that the skeletons would sometimes get stuck on an edge... and their pathfinding was very basic -- like they'd stop chasing me and just stand there if there was a block between us (rather than go around the corner)
(oh, and the controls didn't work the first time on Chrome... worked great after reloading the page -- but you already know about that)
Hi, thanks for playing! Yes, ideally I would love to implement more sophisticated enemy path finding, and I think the bosses could definitely do with some rebalancing. The game is meant to be difficult, but not too difficult/drawn out! I will also look into how to make it more obvious if damage is being dealt or not.
I was finally able to play it in my browser. The aesthetics are great. I love the huge sword and the face that the hero makes when he has to use it. I'm pretty sure I visited every area and didn't see what's in your game screenshots. I only made a couple of run throughs and never activated a dungeon or anything of the sort. I'm sure that is on me, since I was probably supposed to step on a specific tile or something. At one point, I got stuck and could not move; this happened when I walked down in one area and transitioned to the new area below that had "water" on the right and a stone pumpkin person near the bottom left. I included the image here. I don't know why I was still smiling, though, because I was frustrated I couldn't move. :)
I'm glad you got it working! Yes there is a dungeon that is available to you at the start that you should be able to access. The world is quite large, so it's possible you missed it! I will look into the collision in this area and see what happened on your playthrough. Thanks for playing!
Very authentic feel here. :)
I wanted to rate this, but I couldn't play because the listed controls didn't respond. It looks like the key mappings may not be set up correctly. If you update the controls, I'd be happy to try again and provide a full rating.
Hi! i am sorry you were unable to get the controls to respond. If you are on windows, then I recommend downloading if you have issues with the web version. I’ve had a couple people mention that the Web build controls took a while to get working. If you are not on Windows, try refreshing and do not click on the game area after the title menu has appeared. I believe clicking on the game window causes the game to ignore inputs from other control schemes in this current build. I will try and get it fixed after I get home from work today!