Nalleland

Nalleland is a colorful platformer about a bear with a magic sewing pin.

You can throw your pin into walls and bounce on it to reach higher places; or you can throw it on enemies to pin them in place, making it safe to jump on them to finish them off. Across the game world you will find shiny gems to collect, some more hidden than others.

This is my first attempt at making a game for the NES (or any retro computer/console). I've been working on Nalleland for the past ~6 months as a major school project. At this point, it's just a short (~2 minutes) demo, but I think it has some fun in it even so! Feel free to download the ROM below and try it out for yourself.

Nice!

I like the pin idea, that's fun and creative, and works nicely. Nice job! I'm looking forward to playing more as you get further along.

My one piece of advice would be to work on the room transitions -- updating the nametable while scrolling into the next room looks a bit choppy. Maybe having a slight pause to draw the 2nd screen before scrolling would look better?

Thanks!
The transitions is something I've been meaning to fix for a long time, but never got around to. A pause shouldn't even be necessary, I just have to make it write to the nametable in the same direction as the scroll + write attributes first instead of last (currently it always writes in the most obvious top-to-bottom order, so transitions downwards are actually mostly fine).

I think the overall design is great. Love the pin mechanic. Also love the nodding when pushing down, it's cute.

The visuals remind me a bit of knytt stories and other nifflas games, which is a compliment.

This is really good!

The only issue that I had was getting stuck on the first screen for a couple minutes. I thought the goal was to reach the top of the screen and didn't know I could walk right.

I might suggest finding a different way to introduce the pink colored tiles to the player. Presenting them on the edge of the screen makes them seem like a boundary at first glance. I tried throwing my pin at them, and when it bounced off, I thought the color meant "pins can't be stuck here."

This is awesome. Love the animations and variety.

I really like this game. Everything I thought to test you already had covered, like 8-way throwing, which became essential later in the game. I found the first gem completely by accident, but when I found it i knew this game would be fun. I'm excited to see where this game goes.

I really like the mechanics in this, definitely fun to run around and use the pin, very unique. I hope you continue and create a full game out of it.

A couple things I noticed, first I tried it on Everdrive and it did not work, only gave me a gray screen, so I guess it's some sort of mapper issue?

And second, I was able to get out of bounds and find some magical screens of garbage tiles, haha. The first time I was able to just jump around the corner, but then I clipped up thru it a different time, so clipping thru other walls may be possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKszqCgOa-g

Thanks a ton for the feedback! I had no idea you could bounce around corners like that (or clip through tiles, obviously). The game is just using mmc1, so if it doesn't work on Everdrive, it's almost certainly a problem with my game. I haven't had the chance to test it on real hardware, unfortunately.

I love the platforming and the hidden areas. Speedrunning it is quite a bit of fun too! My current any% is 00:00:56:32 https://i.imgur.com/XyJMTvF.jpg

I loaded and ran on hardware using the Powerpak from RetroUSB and it seems to run fine. I like how time stops for a moment when you jump on an enemy. Does the timer still run for that split second? I need to know if killing enemies is bad for speedrunning.

One improvement you could pursue when a hidden area opens up, change the adjacent tiles to floor and ceiling tiles.

I like the level layout, it pairs well with the core mechanic and jump physics.

edit: Got my any% time down to 53:28

Good to hear you got it running, no idea why it would cause issues with Everdrive then. The timer does keep running during the freeze frames (it lasts about 9 frames), so you should indeed avoid killing enemies if you want to optimize your run.

I remember that you posted something before (?) and the progress seems to be going well. The pin mechanic is interesting, just don't know how to use it in certain cases (I guess it comes from experimenting).

Good work!

Wow, I really love the pin mechanic! Quite original, and very creatively employed, especially in the way a lot of the gems are hidden. It's also very intuitive, and introduced nicely via casual experimentation. I can totally see this being a very speedrun focused game, with a lot of emphasis on proper execution.

I really enjoyed the game and thought it was cute and creative, but I also got stuck on the first screen before realizing I could just walk to the right. I would personally put like an arrow sign or something. Playing through it again after having a better grasp on it I had fun finding all six of the gems and it always felt really nice when a whole secret area opened up.

Wow, this was a really cool demo! You've got some really nice game design going on and I like the graphics too.

If I were to give constructive feedback on anything it would be that sometimes it wasn't easy to tell background and walls apart. I first noticed that in the 4th screen.
The music is nice and fits in with the rest of the presentation but it gets a little intense and I'm not sure why. I liked it but I found myself muting it after a few minutes. Maybe the tempo and the drums made it a bit intense, not sure.
My favorite parts were the pin needle game mechanic and all the neat effects like the pausing of time and death animations of nalle and enemies. I'm really impressed you figured out how to do all this stuff on the NES in 6 months!

I noticed both you and Frankengraphics are from Gothenburg, btw. That's cool, so am I.

Thanks! You're not the first to be a bit confused about backgrounds/solids (though I've only really seen the first screen and the top-left one with the background pillars causing troubles before). Everyone seems to get it pretty quickly, so I guess it's not a huge issue, but I might try to do something different with those background tiles. It's hard to differentiate them with color alone with so limited palettes. It's interesting what you said about the music! It's a very short loop, so that probably has something to do with it too, along with the fact I have no idea how to make music .

This is the specific instance on screen #4 that I was unsure about. I think it might be because the background and the wall are the same color or because the background part is so much brighter than the darkest purple of the background. But I mean, it's not a huge issue. It's not like I got stuck or anything.

I think the music is good but if it was up to me, I'd try slowing down the tempo just a bit and ease off a little on the drums, as they become quite dominant IMO. But then again... the tempo might add to the cuteness, so slowing it down might not work, idk..

You guys all better show up at RSM this year!

I'd like to! As usual, i've got work scheduled in another town the same weekend as RSM, and it'd be a significant portion of my income lost that month if i cancel. But if we manage to get the Project Blue campaign out in good time, it might be worth cancelling that gig this year. That's a thin maybe, though.

Retrospelsmässan? Can't go on the 4th (Saturday), but maybe I'll attend on Sunday. It could be fun!

I'm definitely going! Didn't know it had turned into a 2 day event but that sounds cool.
It would be cool to see some NES homebrew being sold at the event. I don't have anything finished myself yet, otherwise that would've been fun. Now that I think of it, that environment might be a cool place to get some public beta testing if you had a booth set up or managed to share with someone.

For all the non-swedish speaking, retrospelmässan (RSM) is a yearly retro game event in gothenburg with loads of booths for buying games as well as speed run competitions and stuff.

Nallebeorn, I bet you could get someone exhibiting there have your demo of Nalleland running!

The last few years I've been going there I've been thinking "next year I'll be able to come back with an actual NES game to show off". Hasn't happened yet.

Would be fun to get together for a single dedicated homebrew stand at one point. I haven't seen a lot of that the other years, if at all (just a subtle sales booth doing some distro for Watermelon)
(sorry for running off-topic)