Play game
The Haunted Shore's itch.io pageRate this game
In order to rate this submission you must be logged into itch.io and have submitted your own entry. Anyone with an account can leave a comment.
Theme interpretation and application
You are stranded on an abandoned island and must fix your ship to continue your travels.
Limitation incorporation
Find the A.M.V.E. to escape!
Team/Developer
winterbraid, Bob
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
YOU COOKED HERE 10/10
Damn at first i felt a bit weird out cause beeping stuff but thankfully the beeping was soft and gbc style which i am cool with then i was again scared for a sec when i saw its top down and has combat but was happy to see some really good combat when i mean good i mean amazing its smoothness and snappyness shocked me and the fact that there are 2 types of weapons also helped a lot i would say if it had like only sword i would have been a bit sad cause its not my fav (even the clay one) but the AXE ya thats peak honestly i am so inspired by it that i want to make a game which has that attack now literally i am not joking
Now lets get on world design first its tooooooooooooooooo small :( (Its actually pretty big but like i want to play more ) also great secrets i did find them all but like lil swag couldnt understand the reference which i think is fine. Other than that ig the world was richly detailed like each room had something in it which is something i think lots of mvm games forget to do and instead leave empty rooms which leads to the world feeling empty and i would say the metroidvania part is a bit weak like i would have appreciated there being a secret somewhere in the bottom right iesh part so the player has to revist or come back later or never find it on their 1st playthrough it would have made the experience so much more richer i would say either way i found the world not that hard to navigate in but it was fun to travel in it and never felt lost (Which is good)and personally enjoyed some of the secret finding also i would say i found it all by myself but i did ask a hint once so :((
Now music its not my fav to hear beeps but like i send this game gets a pass cause its a bit soft also like the sensory is only where i took a star cause the music also my fav track probably is the start one its so pokemon and gbc like i loved it and ofc while we at it the dramatic effect at the start was amazing the no music before sword and then boom music I LOVED IT that was beautiful other than that i felt like the secret black area music was a bit meh but its only 1 rooms so its not that bad
Now Bossfight , ONLY 1 :((( i was sad cause really like the combat once you get used to it its so satisfying but the boss its self i would was a bit too cramped i would say and possibly hard (which i dont hate) but the bullets stacking at times made the fight towards the end a bit rng heavy i would say like if it pick the below line and the bullets are going up and you are on 1st line then you are good but if you are one the 2nd line then basically its a hit for sure which feels bad , i would suggest making it so that there is no side attack cause the fight is pretty hard and fun as is so that not being there wouldnt change that i think and would make the fight less rng i think rest of the fight was actually fun i enjoyed learning its patterns and the end phase is hard to understand i would say but like you did tell me on discord that you wanted to do something else but time so i hope its better in a future update if not atleast make do that when it has 3 bars left and let the player damage it during that time
Now Iframes this one i would say was something i found thats weak in this game especially player Iframes they stun the player and dont allow for movement which makes its possible for the enemy to continue to attack which leads to getting hit before you get control back.The enemy Iframes are actually pretty good i would say maybe reduce their time but its not needed
Now Reference inTerms of MVM, AMVE was a great idea and i liked your way of thinking too actually its a very well implemented and the kei being the name is very intentional and appreciated i would say
Finally polish , this is one thing thats done a lot in the game its small but its super polish and has great effects and stuff i would say
And this is Pretty much all i wanted to say and one final thing i wanted to say was which i hated the most about the game is ...... winterbraid should have worked on this since day 1 so i could play more i really need more pls make more. Also thanks for reading till here you actually rocked and i think this game amazing and might be the best game in the jam and GL on future projects
This is the first work I've been interested in playing through to completion! The overall art and music are very harmonious and really cool — the design is minimalist but has everything it needs. The transition to the boss level felt a bit sudden, but I like it. However, it seems that after failing the boss fight I respawned right outside, which let me skip that phase entirely — though I still went back and finished it!
Also, thank you so much for your review of our game. This is the first comment I've ever received, so I'm really, really happy<33
Thank you for your kind words and for checking out the game! The ability to bypass the boss is something I kinda decided to leave in the game intentionally. I didn't really have time to get anyone to playtest before the deadline, so I wanted people to still be able to see the ending in case the boss turned out to be too hard.
I saw the Deltarune tomorrow comment before playing the game, and after beating it I was wondering what that comment was referring to...until I went back to read the replies to it and realized what I was missing x)
(cool easter egg, btw)
Thank you, and thanks for playing and taking the time to find the secret! :)
A sweet and short entry, can’t say i have much to complain about it.
The game starts with a small intro that I accidentally skipped because i had to close the game for some troubleshooting and after you open the game again, it just skips it immediately, so i had to go watch it on the web browser version (but i played the game through the download version, im not sure why there is two similarly named files, one has the Windows logo, but the other has no description, so i cannot guess what is it for.)
The character, named Kei, is on their ship and gets pulled to an island through strong currents, and needs an object called an A.M.V.E.(Aquatic Maximum Velocity Enhancer) to have their ship be strong enough to leave the island, so there we start the adventure!
The inspirations to Zelda 1 from the NES are fairly obvious, the 8-bit look is fairly well done, almost everything on the game is fairly well drawn, if this was a demo for a Steam game i would have definitely wishlisted the game.
I can only really think of 4 complaints i had about the game:
1 - The lack of music at the start of the game was a little jarring, i wasn’t sure the game had music at all until i grabbed the sword.
2 - The axe is so big and fast i saw no reason to ever use the sword after i obtained it, even though it felt the game wanted me to use the sword, since i kept triggering random things just by swinging the axe around.
3 - The boss life bar didn’t display properly, after it went to 0 i just kept fighting it for a while longer, it felt like it had twice the HP it was being displayed.
4 - I saw the Claymore after i grabbed the A.M.V.E. and was going towards the ship, it felt a little random to see it after i was leaving, but honestly i probably would have kept using the axe anyways.
Thanks for the honest feedback and the video playthrough!
The idea is that the boss has a "last breath" attack where he will fire 20 projectiles before dying for real, but each hit on him will take away one projectile. I should probably have just set his health bar to 20 and make it lose 1 HP for each projectile to have a better visual indicator of what's going on.
Balancing a slow & beefy weapon vs. a weak but fast one is definitely a big challenge. In most games that I've played, usually one of them ends up being better in almost every situation. Personally, I'm always biased towards the slow and beefy weapon, which is why the axe is the way it is.😉
I agree that the axe probably shouldn't have been able to trigger gravestones and campfires. There is a secret in the game that involves NOT hitting a campfire with the axe, but I probably could have thought of a different puzzle to put there.
can't believe deltarune is canonically tomorrow
I am irrationally happy that the person with the Noelle avatar was the first one (to my knowledge) to find it without help
unfortunately "without help" isn't really accurate bc i didn't notice those trees until reading the other comment here complaining about them :( i knew how to get in without help at least x)
This is the first game I've beaten so far. I like how short it is, it feels like it respects my time. I never found the third weapon, I beat the game with only the sword and the axe.
![]()
Also, how am I supposed to hit these trees? Everytime I use the axe it hits the save point and resets the room. Edit: The image isn't showing for me, but I mean the trees in the second screen of the game, in the first save point.
Thanks a lot for playing the game and for the review! As for those trees... well, I feel like you might have already answered yourself.😉
I played before the hotfix so i don't know how accurate some of my nitpicks are, (like how i couldn't kill the boss and how random the amount of damage i dealt and took )
aside from that, i had fun with the game, i love the GBC esque graphics and overall feel of the game. the game gives heavy TLOZ vibes. it was surprisingly shorter than i was expecting though, i really thought the AMVE would be multiple parts but maybe thats just the zelda vibes giving me false expectations.
Thank you for giving the game a shot and for the honest review! The boss does one final attack at 0 health, so maybe that's why it looked like you couldn't kill him? While in that state, he will shoot 20 projectiles before dying for real, but you can reduce the counter by 1 by hitting him. In retrospect, I probably could have communicated that better by setting his healthbar to 20 and reducing it by 1 for every hit or fired projectile.
The boss does gain armor during the "top" phase and the later "side" phases, meaning you will deal less damage in those phases. I wanted the axe to feel powerful to where it'd one-shot or two-shot all regular enemies as well as the early phases of the boss, but I also wanted to encourage the player to dodge a bit more in the later phases of the fight. I agree it might be a bit counterintuitive; there's a different hit sound when you hit an armored enemy, but it's probably a bit too subtle since I didn't have much time to spend on audio balancing at all. (Introducing another armored enemy somewhere earlier in the game probably also would have helped.)
The game's length (and probably some of the other issues) is partly because I made it in a week after dropping a previous project that got way out of hand. That said, I personally think it's a pretty good length for the amount of enemies and upgrades I had. I'm also used to there being a lot more entries in the gamejam, and I feel like a lot of people tend to tune out when a single game takes too long.
(That's probably not as much of an issue in this gamejam due to there being fewer entries than usual, but that's something that was hard to predict until the submission period was over!)
This is great, I love it! Looks and feels great, love the music. Only bug I saw was that you can use the axe when you're dying.
Thank you a lot for your kind words! Just pushed out a last minute patch to hopefully address that and some other issues, as well as a little bit of extra content.
Nice nice. I'm saved outside the final boss, that'll be cool to experience when I finish it up!
I really like this game! Have a very nice difficulty curve, a variety of enemies and a nice flow in the map. I didn´t win the fight with the boss for now, but i will.
Well done!
Thank you! As a side effect of the save system, you can actually just ignore the boss and go straight back to the ship. I decided to keep it as a feature since I kinda ran out of time to have anyone playtest the game. :)