| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameboy Soul | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Overall | #23 | 4.035 | 4.035 |
| Graphics | #38 | 4.421 | 4.421 |
| Soundtrack/SFX | #44 | 4.053 | 4.053 |
| Gameplay | #53 | 3.895 | 3.895 |
| Secondary Theme Interpretation | #141 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
| Quirkiness | #191 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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)
Great and substantial entry! The enemy art looks great! The alchemy component plays out quiet well and feels like a fun resource management.
I did run into a glitch when healing from the menu. Healing once prevented me from backing out of the menu or changing selections until I reselected and full healed. Wasted a few reagent because of that.
Well done! (Coming from someone who does not particularly enjoy menu combat games)
That was amazing. That felt very polished for a game put together for a game jam in only ten days. I think the only weirdness that jumped out at me is that the houses in the Brambewoods are not safe. You can still get into random encounters inside them. I hope you finish the rest of this one. (There's a "Continue Your Game" Game Jam that starts in about nine hours....) :D
Thank you for the kind words!
The weirdness you mentioned: I do believe you found a bug with enemy encounters inside the houses; as thatās definitely not intentional, whoops! š¤« Weāll fix that posthaste once the voting period is over, as I can already tell which part of the overworld script had gone kaput.
Oh? First Iāve heard of this āContinue Your Gameā Jam thing, would you happen to have a link?
Yeah: /jam/cyg-14
It's more focused on writing Devblogs as your game progresses than on the game itself, but I joined it because my own GBJAM-14 entry was so unfinished. :D
what a cool retro rpg! it's clear to see how much care and effort went into every bit of this game. it's a polished experience that feels authentically like the gameboy. i died in the 4 enemy encounters a lot unfortunately... why wouldn't my crewmates help me? rude. anyway, great game! you can be proud.
Cheers, glad you enjoyed it! š
The 4 enemies battle was actually meant to be one of the much later encounters in the zone once youāve leveled up a bit! It slipped through the current build so it can really hose you early, unfortunately!
After the Jam ends, will probably update it so the hard encounters donāt happen until you pass a certain trigger or reach a certain level, smoothing out the difficulty curve a bit.
(the crewmates are pacifists who donāt or canāt fight; we wanted to give them something else to do to support you, but we ran out of time!)
Really nice RPG! The combat animations are especially well done, and I really liked the enemy designs.
The alchemy system is a great idea too, especially when it becomes part of exploration instead of just being another combat mechanic. The environments are also really detailed and pleasant to explore.
The only thing that felt a bit odd to me was the movement, there seems to be a slight delay or sliding feeling after each input, almost like walking on ice.
Overall, really nice work!
Thank you! Aye the Alchemy system was decided very quickly on a spur of the moment decision; luckily it ended up being quite fun! It could definitely use a bit more playtesting and balancing, but overall weāre happy with out it turned out š
We ran out of time to implement this, but it was also planned to use Fire & Defend on the Overworld (light things on fire + protect against hazards)
And aye, the movement for the player character could use a few more keyframes to help with that sliding feeling! Itās also locked to navigating 16 x 16 pixel squares at a time, so once you move youāre basically committed, contributing to that walking on ice feeling (worth trying a few other solutions for this one)
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
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 š
I think if we had just 1 more day of playtesting, weād 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 š
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 itās not nearly as difficult, as thatās 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 š
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!
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!
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, thatās 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 šŖ
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 ā°
As for the run calculations, theyāre 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 š“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 bugsš
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! Cāest la vie!
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