Toggle Switch just submitted our entry for this years' NesDev compo. That equals public release! Hope you'll enjoy it  


Download the game from this nesdev thread

Also if you have any thoughts, feel free to share them - good or bad. Feedback makes us better.   

 

Congrats on your submission. Please edit your title with the [homebrew] tag if you don't mind.

I dig the graphic style! I can't wait to give this a go!

Thanks! Oh, sorry. Added it!

Looks cool, I'll have to try this out.

Looks great! You're off the chain with the art!  

I will download this today! Excited to give this a play through.

Played and finished the demo, I just found a few things that maybe could be check...

1- There is a room with a big hole were I suppose you should fall into the other rooms, but with practice you can jump the hole room and avoid like 4 rooms down.
2- There is another room (you enter from our right side) with a heart and some green laser thing, the heart is hard to get, but thats not the problem, if you wait enough in that room, sometimes you will see a "glitch" of the heart appearing in other spot (like a fraction of second)
3- And this is just personal taste of feedback, but the character moves weird, dont get me wrong, its a great demo so far, but I kinda hated that the character seems like he is walking on ice, he slides too much for my tastes, sometimes I felt I was being hit not for my fault, just because I wanted to walk fast and then stop but I wasnt able, because the character still slide no matter what you do.

Other than that, cool game, nice graphics, I wasnt able to listen to his music, will try it again later.

Hi NiO, and thanks for playing! The feedback is much appreciated - We're compiling lists and taking notes... 

1)If you give it another go sometime, would you mind posting or PM:ing me a screenshot of the room you were talking about - just so i haven't missed anything?

​There are actually several rooms where you can do a bit of pathtaking - the idea being that skillful players (speedrunners among them) will master how to wholly and reliably skip certain screens. This is especially true in the "rooftop basins", but there are a handful of minor shortcuts hidden in plain sight scattered across the whole demo. Some people like to sequence break! 

2)This sounds like a bug, in which case we would like to root it out. Which room was this? Anything else that describes the scenery? I've tested two that i thought matched the description but wasn't able to replicate it. 

3)You're not alone in this - personally, i love the firm stops of games like castlevania 1, 2 and 3! But I think the game physics are dead set at this point. It's simply how we like it for this particular game.   
Here's a few tips how you can gain more control over your momentum: 
-By pressing in the opposite direction of what you were running, you can grind to a halt much quicker than by just stopping. It's almost exactly like in Super Mario Bros. in that regard. 
-If your speed is too high for a particular challenge, i can also recommend alternating between pushing and letting go of the direction, which will result in a lower speed in average. With some training, you can even keep that lower speed fairly constant!
-Still with those techniques in hand, it's always good to anticipate the inertia and acceleration. Just like in a team sport, try to predict when the best time is to change direction, jump, or stop moving - before it happens!

I already took some screenshots, will try to find a site to upload them and show you wich ones.

The room with the heart had some chainsaws below, the heart was on the right side of the screen, and there was a green thing that kills you as soon as you touch it, to get the heart you should jump a small hole, and you can get killed by the green thing if you cant stop soon.

About the sliding, I did what you say, walk and then press the opposite direction, still sometimes I get hit because it doesnt stop as fast as I would want xD

you can try www.wetransfer.com... and send the download code my way, for example! Again, thanks!

Oh, and we're looking into what we can do about the about the acceleration/deceleration.  

Will this game get a physical release?  

Yes it will! Two versions:

1) NesDev Compo Edition - as shown in this demo, but with a few things tuned and polished some more, at a size of ~48kB:s - along with the other competition entries on a multicartridge that'll be called "Action 53 vol. 4"

2) A significantly expanded standalone release on a 512kB cartridge*.  I'll blow the horn once the kickstarter is ready, which may take a while... there'll probably be news in-between, too. 


*How we choose to spend all that space isn't entirely worked out just yet, but i think it's safe to say you'll see a couple of bonus features, beside more levels. Also, if you're looking at it technically, the reality is the level engine code has to be duplicated across a couple of banks, so so we're more realistically looking at approximately 350kB:s of unique code & data across those 512kB:s, is my current estimate. 

Awesome news!

This is where the heart glitch happened... (if you wait, it would appear like a 1 milisec like 2 or 3 tiles to the right suddenly and dissappear)



This is the hole that you can jump to skip some rooms (left to right)

Thanks, that confirms a few things!

screen 1) In that room you have 9 actors which is right at the threshold of what the engine can handle in a stable fashion per screen. If the computations take a little too long, you'll start to see a bit of flicker-like displacement on sprites. It's completely normal and commonplace in many commercial NES games.

screen 2) Good! That screen is specifically for skipping once you've got a good grip on the controls. The rationale is that the experienced player will want to skip through the first couple of levels quickly, so planting little shortcuts just like that helps with that. Once the player has gained some experience, that jump can be made reliably, among other little shortcuts.


Btw, acceleration/deceleration has been tuned to be more firm, so now it is firmer than super mario bros but still looser than castlevania.

Hey guys! Here's a link to the latest version for the compo edition. It includes a couple of bugfixes, tighter physics, a few difficulty & level adjustments, and last but not least better PAL compatibility. Unless something else surfaces, this'll be the version that will get included on the compo cartridge.

https://forums.nesdev.com/downloa...

We're making solid progress on the full version. It has moved to said 512kB cartridge. As we now have ample room for more data, Donny expanded how many 4x4 metatiles we could use per level, which will result in more uniquely detailed backgrounds. I'm currently working on the 2nd levels' assets and polishing the visuals of the 1st further, and donny's been writing new music and improving the level editor. 

Very cool!

From this post onward, i'll share some sneak peeks on the progress being made for the full version. They're usually ideal protetypes not necessarily exact occurences from the actual game. 

Ideal prototype for one level: 


deadly rebar nests in yet another level:


We're still on track for a release this fall. 

Wow, looking great!

Very beautiful!
This game is going to have a huge impact when the full version is released!

Textile/video game artist Per Fhager is embroidering a big canvas with a scene from the full version of the game... i'm pretty hyped and starstruck about this. 

Here's a sneak peek on his work in progress. 
We're planning to show it off, along with the full game, at Portland Retro Gaming Expo this year. Fingers crossed!



Full article here: https://frankengraphics.com/2018/...

One more reason to go to PRGE!

I'm also crossing my fingers to be there in person, but it's very uncertain! 

Anyway... there's apparently a speed running record of 06m22s05 for the nesdev compo version of the game. Anyone up to the challenge?  



;

 

NEWS UPDATE

The game will have to wait a little bit longer before we can launch it on kickstarter. We're aiming for a launch in February 2019, if nothing unexpected throws itself in our way.
The software itself may very well be more or less complete in time for PRGE, but we want to do everything right. That includes:
-Giving the label, box and manual the amount of design and care they deserve.
-Figuring out the exact logistics (it's our first self-publication of a game, after all).
-Give our manual illustrations and box cover artist M-Tee a better opportunity to evaluate the full contents of the game in action.
-Make the campaign itself as robust as possible.
-Present a finished game right at launch - no loose ends. 
-Not sitting on a pile of other peoples' money for too long. We aim at ordering all of the manufacture as soon as the campaign has successfully ended so you guys will have the game in your hands not long after the fact.