Fool's Gold by chaotikza

[raw]
made by chaotikza for Ludum Dare 45 (JAM)

Our first game for PICO-8 is a simple roguelike that asks the question, you started with nothing... will you end with nothing?

FoolsGoldGameplay.png

Controls: - Move: Arrows - Select: C

Made some small post release fixes - documented here.

Ratings

Overall 623th 3.391⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 408th 3.457⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 769th 2.913⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 556th 3.304⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 655th 3.37⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Audio 394th 3.304⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Humor 485th 2.881⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 510th 3.391⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

gamebuilder
08. Oct 2019 · 19:15 UTC
A fine use of PICO-8. I was reminded of Adventure for the Atari 2600.
Jupiter_Hadley
11. Oct 2019 · 07:41 UTC
Cute game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 45 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/r6FwX_V0zMo
mrerdalural
11. Oct 2019 · 11:37 UTC
Simple beautiful and fun! You really have captured the essence of a good old school Roguelike and put it into an arcade game! I really enjoyed this game thank you for making it!
Cyberwiz
12. Oct 2019 · 09:53 UTC
Thanks so much for the good feedback :smile:
DrGrognak
12. Oct 2019 · 19:31 UTC
Very cool start! Got some rad Cadence of Hyrule vibes from this. I think the base gameplay loop is fun, and it lasted just long enough to be enjoyable without dragging out. Would love to see more enemy designs added and other stage intractables.
Chocolat-Endive
12. Oct 2019 · 19:34 UTC
Nice one! It's a bit to easy, no ennemies chase you. I like the rogue like spirit and the low-rez graphic. After "winning" I tried a "second run" because I did'nt really use the sword and the cloak and the game crashed when I tried to buy the cloak to the old man.

![Screenshot 2019-10-12 at 21.30.57.png](///raw/477/91/z/297a2.png)
Phoenix Fireflower
12. Oct 2019 · 19:36 UTC
This game is pretty good concidering it's your first game using PICO-8.
My only criticism is that the background music gets a little repetitive after a while.
(P.S. Praat julle Afrikaans?)
🎤 chaotikza
12. Oct 2019 · 20:41 UTC
@mrerdalural Thank you for playing and your kind words! I think that's some of the nicest feedback I've ever received for a game I've worked on.

@drgrognak I am strongly considering working on a post-compo version - I especially would like to add pathfinding as I had originally planned, so that the chests will chase you. Also Cadence of Hyrule looks interesting!

@chocolat-endive Thanks for the bug report - I'll look into it.

@phoenix-fireflower Thanks! :smile: Ja, ons praat Afrikaans.
BilalCh213
13. Oct 2019 · 10:07 UTC
That is a fun little game! I really liked the sound effects! Feels like I am playing some arcade game. Decent old school roguelike.
Cyberwiz
13. Oct 2019 · 11:52 UTC
@phoenix-fireflower Thanks for the feedback. It was my first jab at writing music in my life so once I had something semi-decent we just stuck with that and I didn't write more. It's also the reason we included options to turn off music from the pause menu.
velvetlobster
13. Oct 2019 · 19:11 UTC
Minimal and authentic! My favorite part was the sound effects somehow, it looks and feels like 90s pc game or like a Atari game
ashashza
14. Oct 2019 · 17:58 UTC
Woah, character animation with the cloak on is so cool!
🎤 chaotikza
14. Oct 2019 · 18:11 UTC
Thanks @ashashza! Glad you liked it - I was quite proud of the cloak animation, so I actually tweaked the costs a bit in the bugfix patch to make it a natural first buy, because I suspect most people just went for the sword and skipped it.
CG_Fred
14. Oct 2019 · 21:02 UTC
The gameplay was a little repetitive and would have loved to see some more monsters. But overall a good entry and the art was nice!
hyperscope
14. Oct 2019 · 22:01 UTC
I'm not sure if it's a limitation of the game engine but the way the camera followed was a bit off putting. Other then that the game play did exactly what it needed to!
🎤 chaotikza
14. Oct 2019 · 22:09 UTC
Thanks @cg-fred! We had a few more ideas for monsters and traps, but had to cut them because we both had to work on the Monday... but I might do a post-jam version if I don't get sucked into GitHub GameOff too badly.

@hyperscope Thank you, that's useful feedback. I think it should be possible to add a tween to get a smoother follow.
Cyberwiz
14. Oct 2019 · 22:10 UTC
Thanks for the feedback!

@cg-fred we would have loved to add more variety, but time sadly caught up with us. I think some pathfinding would've helped a lot to add some more flavour.

@hyperscope I'm not completely sure why you found the camera movement jarring, but for simplicity sake we moved the camera with the player. Some PICO-8 games use a camera that only moves once you reach the edge of the screen, but there's risk in that if monsters were to lurk on the edge of the next section. We have relative freedom with screen movement though since we can just code the behaviour we want ourselves.
Fvafhae
14. Oct 2019 · 22:31 UTC
A simple and interesting roguelike game, I've enjoyed playing it. Background audio fits perfectly!
Colin Stone
15. Oct 2019 · 04:08 UTC
Great game, I especially like the camera shake when you hit an enemy, although I never saw them hit me
boyTurnedRobot
16. Oct 2019 · 13:27 UTC
Interesting ending. I would have kept playing through more times if there was a little more to do, but I understand that time constraints make that hard to accomplish. I ran into the same thing on my game. Overall fun enough for a play through and something that can easily be expanded on. Good Work.
🎤 chaotikza
23. Oct 2019 · 07:19 UTC
@colin-stone I was working on a post-competition version the last few nights - mainly adding path-finding... turns out there's a bug in the enemy movement code that makes them consider the player's position not an open square, so they would never have moved into you! :face_palm: The version I'm testing now is considerably harder...