Play game
Aurum & Aether'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.
How does your game meet GBJam's theme
The central story and combat mechanics revolve around Alchemy (mixing ingredients together to do magical things).
"Old Gold" is represented by alchemy itself (the pursuit of gold - the origin of the craft) and tarnished glory (both humans and alchemists are now incredibly rare)
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
This was one of the most complete and polished game I've played during the game jam, the atmosphere, graphics and music was awesome, the gameplay was also very well implemented, the amount of content in this game was fantastic. Very good job
Awesome game! I loved the music and the vibes. Great gameplay all around. Would love to see a full version.
Thank you kindly! 😄 It was definitely set up as a prologue of sorts, to see if the foundations were fun enough to continue. We’ll see what happens after the Jam is officially over!
Wow, the good old combat system. I really like the art design and the story. Keep going!
That classic turn-based system definitely was a formative memory for me 😆 Turns out it’s also perfect for keeping up with the limitations of the Game Boy while still keeping that game juice! Will do, and thanks!
Charming game! I really liked the art, esp the environment art and enemy art. The 4-goblin encounter was a bit too much for me and crushed me when I couldn't run lol.
Sweet, thank you! Really glad we had multiple hands on this one, as making all that stuff can be super time consuming 😅
I think if we had just 1 more day of playtesting, we’d cut down on the super difficult encounters and make it a smoother difficulty curve. Sorry about that; will try to fix it in post!
Really detailed environment with a good story. I really like the pixel art! and the music is nice too :)
A bit of trouble going through that forest though took me a few tries lol
Cheers! The Tiled Map Editor really saved my bacon on throwing together a nice environment quickly; highly recommended! The GB limitations also helped keep the focus on the enemy sprites, so it ended up being a happy accident 🙌
Lesismore did an awesome job on the soundtrack, I highly recommend their work!
We could have definitely used a few more rounds of playtesting; hopefully we can fix it in post so it’s not nearly as difficult, as that’s definitely not the overall intent!
I didn't expect to see a classic turn-based RPG! It was a good time. I liked how much lore you managed to pack into the limited dialogue, and the alchemy structure with reagents for magic was super neat! It did feel a bit unbalanced though - the alchemy didn't feel particularly powerful enough compared to attacks, and compared to the cost of reagents. Plus it felt like for the cost of reagents/inn stays you can't really grind well, leaving the player pretty heavily at the mercy of rng to not get totally stuck.
That said, I had a good time! And I was really impressed how much content you managed to pack into the game in the span of the jam. This is one I might put on a cart and play on my gameboy for train commutes.
Many thanks! We wanted to start the player in the middle of a story + avoid lore dumps before they could start playing; just little hints here and there!
Aye playtesting was fairly shortchanged, as much of the brunt of the game came in the last day or so. Some of the numbers were still being tweaked 2 hours before the deadline 😅
Personally I would love to add a little more content if people like it (after the jam voting period ends, of course)
Really impressive submission! That this game got fleshed out in such a short time period is awesome. Feels right at home on the Game Boy for sure!
Thank you for the kind words! Definitely some long hours for a bit there, but it was worth it in the end 🙌 Give it a shot on a real Game Boy if you ever get the chance!
A rather interesting game that embraces all the hallmarks of the genre's classics. It really nails the atmosphere. I even replay Golden Sun for the occasion!
Thank you! Ye olde Game Boy is particularly great for RPGs since the limitations guide the design 👍
Would love to also build a game reminiscent of Golden Sun/Shining Force someday! (pretty much any of Camelot Software games)
Now here is an entry with a real GB-soul in it. You captured it beautifully . Loved the battle-sprites. It is clear you put love into this game.
Great lore too. You should expand this further. It has real potential. Glad i could play it. I will say, at one point i tried to run from a fight. But i failed thrice in a row, i think. Not sure if it is bad luck, a hidden stat that makes it impossible or unlikely to run, or maybe a small bug.
But the alchemy hook was pretty dang cool.
Cheers, that’s 100% what we were going for! I pushed hard for making it playable on a real Game Boy, so it could be as authentic as possible 💪
I would love to expand it further! At this point time is significantly more precious than ideas, so I just need as much of it as possible, and more games will follow ⏰
As for the run calculations, they’re a 50% flat rate, then an additional 5% chance to run per turn that has elapsed. I think raising it to a higher percentage makes a lot of sense (once we can update again) as by turn 3 you should be guaranteed to escape!
Had a lot of fun with this one! The music + art were AMAZING, making me wish I could go back and redo some of my sprites lol. Really put me back into my youth 👴great job! Only form of feedback I could bring is that I kinda rinse + repeated when I was traveling East battling, would've liked a few more chests or something BUT I recognize that wasn't exactly happening a ton in GB days, loved it!
Thank you kindly; it means a lot! I too wish we could fix our games during the 2 week voting period, in this case to fix a couple of bugs😅
Definitely was trying to evoke that sense of nostalgia! I myself grew up on Final Fantasy Legend 2 (aka SaGa 2) so that was a huge inspiration for this.
Also aye, the last areas came together in literally the last day, so we had to rush the implementation a smidge. I wanted to put more shortcuts, chests, spells, items, and enemies, but we just ran out of time! C’est la vie!