itch.io

Thanks for posting.  I didn't know this history, so this was interesting.

Good point, it is a fairly long scene already.  Maybe she could bring it up and Betancourt can just say he'll explain later?  I assume it will come up again at some point anyway, so that could be a way to communicate the party's confusion without inflating the scene very much.

I think this is a great start.  The lo-fi aesthetic works well and the art and music are well-chosen.  I liked the introduction that starts in the middle of the action.  Characters have a fair mix of abilities, though I found combat to be on the easy side so far.  Looking forward to seeing more.

A few things I noticed:

- The font is a little strange.  The lower-case L looks like a 1, and commas and apostrophes look like they are defaulting to the standard font.

- Some skills that target the party like Scrounge and Refresh have a long delay, like they are playing an animation that isn't visible.

- Poultice and Refresh don't heal any more than Rally, which seems odd.

- Betancourt's book flame attack animation feels a bit long.

- When speaking to Grau, Renata says "Let's go tell Nata" instead of referring to Petra.

- The dialogue prompt at the inn is cut off.

- In the canyon cave, the fang decoration on the wall overlaps the player.

- Run is disabled in the canyon cave - not sure if intended, but I would prefer to have it.

- Betancourt says that it would take cult ships 50 years to cross the ocean, and implies that the people here have no concept of such a distance or any familiarity with other lands.  I feel like the obvious followup from the party is to ask how he and Alistair even got there, or maybe shock that there is even anything that far out to sea, but they don't seem fazed by it.

- The party was looking for a cache of metal or something in the magma core, but they leave empty-handed and don't mention it again (unless I just missed it).

I'm checking out your demo, and made it to the second floor.  Very ambitious work so far.  Looking forward to seeing more.

They always had the option of paying for it, they just chose not to.

Congrats!

I came across this after I played On Elder Shores for FBQ8, and really enjoyed it.  I played on Steam and left you a review over there.  Is Aeons Present still in development?  I'm interested to see how the story continues.

For Itch users, I'll cross-post my review from Steam:

First thing: some commands (the compass and, more importantly, the lantern) are not accessible on the gamepad. This isn't game-breaking, but it's very silly. The compass stayed on permanently once I turned it on, but the lantern didn't. I usually just made my way without the lantern, as it's rarely crucial.

Aeons Past brings influences from Brandish and Arx Fatalis into the RPG Maker template. It's charming and well-written, with plenty of side quests and dense, lively dungeon design that rewards poking into every corner. This is clearly intended to be the first of a series, with many lingering plot and character threads and an ending that demands a sequel, but the game is still plenty satisfying on its own and is not an incomplete experience by any means. There is more than enough content and quality here to justify the full price of US $2.99, so if you're interested, don't wait for a sale. Just get it.

The one aspect of the game that I didn't find very compelling was the multiclass system. Since you don't have an abundance of skill points and skills are limited by what armor and weapon you're using, I just stuck to each character's default spec. There didn't seem to be much reason to swap them around.

I played the previous version of the demo a little while back and enjoyed it.  Looking forward to seeing the final game.  How many chapters are you planning?

Atmospheric and sweet.  A nice little winter break game.  The fairy abilities are cute and a creative way to handle traversal.  I did get a little lost a couple of times, but I figured it out.  Great job.

Good progress!

As much as I love RPGs, no, it's not necessary or even beneficial for every game.  For example, there are countless action and arcade games that have no permanent character progression (though many have temporary powerups).  Consider classic games like Ninja Gaiden, Contra, Castlevania, Streets of Rage, or Super Ghouls n' Ghosts.  Gameplay satisfaction in games like these primarily comes from building mastery and overcoming increasingly difficult challenges.  Beating them is memorable and feels great.  Of course some games in this style do have ability / stat progression (e.g. Megaman and especially the X series), but it isn't required.

Some recent AMD video drivers have been causing problems with Vulkan. If you have an AMD video card and the level geometry doesn't render (mostly black or blue field screen), try updating or rolling back your drivers, or playing in OpenGL mode. For me, this seems to be resolved with the latest drivers (25.11.1), but I will update if I encounter any further issues.

Screenshot of the issue:

https://imgur.com/a/3jIZGsh

More details here:

https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/109378

Unfortunately I wasn't able to play this, as it throws a script cache error when I try to open the menu.

Pretty cool arcade crawler with some amusing dialogue and great character art.  It gives me a little bit of a Slayers vibe.  Hoping to see the story continued someday.

This is great!  Clever puzzles with great sprite work and animation and an interesting story on top.  I was a little confused at first and it took me a bit to get the hang of how the shadows work, but once I did it was a really cool mechanic with room for mastery.  I wish there were more levels, but I did go back to get all of the achievements, both to uncover the lore and to test my skills with a better understanding of the game.

The basic style of the game reminds me a bit of Ronin, another action puzzle game, but of course the execution and mechanics here are totally different.

Sorry it took me a little while to check it out, it's been a busy year.

Nice progress!

Hi, one bug I have seen is that when you get game over, enemies stay active, so the firing sound effects still play and you can sometimes see bullets on the game over screen.

I have had to take many months away from game dev to recover from injuries or illness.  If taking care of your health interferes with game dev, prioritize your health in all cases.  Your projects aren't going anywhere.

Ohh OK, thanks.  I think this should be added to the instructions on the game page, like what it says for the weapons.

Hi, I couldn't get the rotation commands to work, either on keyboard or on gamepad.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

They didn't say it was only for multiplayer.  They said it was for everyone.

I don't want to add platform DRM to my games.

Thanks so much, I appreciate your feedback and I hope you enjoy the game!

I decided to convert the community section to a message board for better organization.  Apologies to those who have previously posted comments, as enabling the message board automatically hides comments and vice versa.

If needed, all of the above can be found in subdirectories in the following locations.  If you experience a crash, freeze, scripting error, etc., please include any details from the log file.  This will help me identify the issue.

WINDOWS: %AppData%\Midnight Spire Games\Minerva Labyrinth

LINUX: ~/.local/share/Midnight Spire Games/Minerva Labyrinth

Really cool mini crawl.  I like the story and atmosphere, and the mechanic of having to choose to give up specific capabilities as you progress is interesting.  Combat is nice and quick and I liked that I could attack with guns before enemies got close.

The wobbly line effect kind of bothered me because it's pretty extreme, so I would have liked to turn that off, but I did get used to it.  I also never noticed when I picked up supplies.  There's a popup for new weapons, but I didn't notice anything for supplies.

It took me a few tries to get through the fourth level.  By now I didn't have the scout, and it took me a bit to realize what was going on with the bombs.  Once I did, I moved carefully to be able to react when they showed up, and checked every intersection for bombs before moving ahead.

I ended the game with the mapper, since that was the one skill I really didn't want to give up.

Looks cool!

Minerva Labyrinth is a traditional dungeon-crawling RPG in the lineage of Wizardry and The Bard's Tale.  You control a squad of magically-enhanced warriors who must defend your city from an invasion of twisted extradimensional monsters. 

• Interleaved turn-based combat with a party of five characters.
• Create your party from scratch, or get started immediately with the default party.
  
• First-person grid-based dungeons full of traps, secrets, riddles, ambushes, and treasure.
• Full automap! Save anywhere!

It's been a long road to finish this game, but I'm excited to finally release it.  If you've played my previous dungeon crawler, Tower of Metal, the core design will be familiar, but you can expect a much bigger, more complex, more refined experience.

Minerva Labyrinth will be released November 5th, 2025 for Windows and Linux!  The free demo is available right now, and any progress you make in the demo will carry over to the full version.

My dark magical girl dungeon crawler, Minerva Labyrinth, is finally coming out on November 5th (demo available now).  This is a traditional dungeon-crawling RPG in the lineage of Wizardry and The Bard's Tale.  It features full party and character creation, turn-based combat, and first-person dungeon exploration.

Sounds like fun.  I'm currently crunching to get my own project released, but I'll try to make time to check it out in the near future.  I am a dungeon crawl enthusiast, so my perspective might be helpful.

I'm curious that you describe it as a dungeon crawler, since at a glance it doesn't really make me think of dungeon crawling.  Can you say a bit more about the design and focus?

Also, is there a downloadable demo?  Playing in the browser makes me nervous that my save files are going to disappear.

Yep! You can save pretty much anywhere. It's a fairly sizeable game, so saving is a must.

Looks very cool, will check out the demo when I can.

Yes, I migrated my entire project from Unity to Godot and have been very happy with it.

I'm not an expert, but here are two tips that helped me improve a lot:

1) I see the sprite that you linked is black and white, but when you want to try color, continue working with a limited palette (maybe 16-64 colors).  This is much easier than trying to pick from several million colors.  Actually creating a palette also takes experience, though, so either start VERY small (like 4 colors), or find an existing palette that appeals to you, like EGA or something from https://lospec.com/palette-list.

2) Study pixel art that you like.  Zoom in, examine pixel by pixel, look at proportions and angles and colors and outlines, figure out the techniques that make it look the way it does.  Then try to reproduce those effects in your own art.  Even a single pixel can make a big difference in how the image turns out, so studying their placements and patterns can help you understand how to get the results you want.

The mouse cursor can't leave the game window when set in fullscreen mode, which is what I meant by "hijacking". I know this is not entirely uncommon, though I had a controller plugged in and for some reason expected that to take priority, allowing the mouse to interact with the OS or other applications.

I can't reproduce this.  Can you provide more details about your setup?

I did see that status icons were displayed, I just wasn't sure how to easily identify what certain states did (especially the ones added by monster attacks). It's possible there was something I missed in the game guide or an NPC dialog.

The main menu during combat has a Status command.  This will allow you to select any combatant and view details for all of their active status effects.

there are some points where I felt like there was a major disconnect between how our protagonists are framed, versus how they actually functioned in combat.

Can you give examples?

I don't think there's a problem necessarily with the support skills being less "gimmick" driven compared to melee and direct damage abilities. Though support skills often get used less when healing is a frequent need, and MP reserves are very limited. So it may be worth revisiting costs for some of the peripheral stuff, before increasing / tuning their effects.

I meant the passive skills that you choose during character creation.  You said that some of these lack synergy, and I agree.  I like this setup, but the choices could be more impactful or interesting.