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The Curse of Hollowwood's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #71 | 2.840 | 2.933 |
| NES Feel | #79 | 2.582 | 2.667 |
| Overall | #84 | 2.598 | 2.683 |
| Gameplay | #88 | 2.453 | 2.533 |
| Graphics | #89 | 2.517 | 2.600 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
* I loooooved the music. The instrumentation obviously was way outside the realm of an NES but the instrumentation with the Flamenco guitar and percussion went hard
* The game appears to be quite bugged. I was in the negatives on HP and then would just immediately die whenever anything hit me. The music also suddenly restarts sometimes, and the collision with stairs is pretty finnicky- often I'd just fall through them
* I think the use of dithering on the background is really interesting, I assume you're using that to show the transition from night to day which is a really neat idea. It's very flickery on LCD but I'm very curious what that would look like on a CRT I think it'd be pretty cool. I think the flickering thing could have been solved by stopping it from scrolling/locking it to the camera.
* The game's combat felt like it was BEGGING for a crouch a la Castlevania or Zelda II. Lots of enemies close to the ground (including the rats it straight up looks like I shouldn't even be able to hit), lots of arrows and rocks ripe to duck under. I think it would have mixed up the combat a good deal since a lot of it is standing and spamming stab over and over
* I find it interesting you went with up to jump and left the B button open by default, given it's pretty uncommon for platformers and especially metroidvanias. But I really appreciate the control remap implementation!
* I liked the character art and animations, especially the purple sickle guy he's my favorite
Thanks for playing and raising original points.
I liked the stair mechanic, admittedly, I’ve never played CV2, and got thrashed playing Zelda for research. I don’t know how you’d expect the stairs to handle. Pressing up jumps you off them, getting hit knocks you off them.
Dithering flickered for me too. I can probably can that gimmick post jam, which will be a long time, with many more fixes made in the meantime as I have to wait for MetroidVania Jam to end (unless I get DQ for not MV enough).
Being raised on 1-button joysticks, up to jump seemed the obvious solution. Secondary attack is a WIP.
OH!
I'm surprised to hear you haven't played Castlevania, I assumed that's where you got the stairs from, aaaaaaand huh now that I think about it that's probably why I thought they had collision issues! In Castlevania you're holding up to maintain movement up the stairs, pressing up again just moves you further up the stairs (since jump is a button). Since your game tied the up button to jumping, I probably pressed it without remembering it was a jump, assuming I had to hold down up the whole time I was on them... especially because when you "jump" off the stairs in your game currently you don't really gain height, you just fall straight through.
What kind of one button platformers did you play if I may ask? I'm curious to try some, even arcade games like Donkey Kong, Mappy or Bubble Bobble have a dedicated jump button so this perspective is interesting to me
Mostly my imagination, TBH. My joystick was always broken or still in the shop.
Barbarian and Barbarian (Psygnosis) could be early examples for the one-button joystick genre. That’s nearly 40 years ago, and jumping was rarer than I remembered it.
The one game I will never forget, is SF2.
I really enjoyed what I played. Loved the goblins climbing on top of each other to block me from jumping over them haha. The enemy variation was impressive and their AI is extremely well done. I did walk to the right in the beginning and fall in the hole where I got stuck. Did you make it for me? 😂
I appreciated the animations and enemy designs here—you had so many! There's a lot of systems here and I felt like I could barely scratch the surface in my runs. One thing to note was that I seemed to accumulate negative HP on respawning which led to me needing to fully restart the game for a fair run—otherwise I'd just get one hit on my way up towards the top.
That’s the biggest outstanding-bug/feature. I’m addicted to roguelikes so just accepted the dodgy respawn mechanic. Like every jam, corners were cut to meet the deadline, and I’m still thinking how best to tackle something as major as a game-over screen. If you say it is not a fair run, then I accept it is simply too bugged to remain. There are worse bugs, IMO, I have already fixed locally.
Thank you for your considered review.
The game is really fleshed out for the time you had! The music was fire, and I like the castlevania inspiration. Good job!
I like the enemy and player sprites. The animations are funny and a bit goofy which adds a lot of charm to the game. Impressive you were able to add so many RPG mechanics!
I ended up with negative health and died from any hit xd
Overall, it seems pretty cool. I know how hard it must have been to build those stairs; there's something like that in my game and it was hell, and there's a whole sales system.
and the music is excellent
Thanks. Death is optional; the medical bills are not!
I like rogue like, and didn’t want you to lose all your stuff, so let you decide when you’ve had enough. I’d love to hear your suggestions here. You know the fellow above the re-spawn point sells healing potions?
Not's bad game.
nice game
I liked the game, but i didn't understand the curse though. The gameplay, art, and NES feel are good
Thanks for your comment; I updated the description to include the curse.
I thought the curse was harder. The game is. Thanks for playing.