What a lovely, super impressive game! Fantastic graphics and music and all the better that you worked within the real constraints of a Gameboy ROM.

I found the controls to be unnecessarily difficult to work with, and I got stuck on the 3rd level. I liked the puzzle aspects of the game a lot.

Holey fuck. How have you guys been able to do this is such a small amount of time. This Ludum dare I have made a GBA game myself but damn. The fighting with C code and the constant reading of Tonc http://coranac.com/tonc/text/video.htm took a very long time.

Could you make the source code available or give a brief explanation on how you guys have made this?

Also the music like how. Its perfect. A long time ago a friend of mine has been working on music for the gba for a whole weekend and got it working with a lot of qwarks like only 3 channels available of the 8 first 4 notes are skiped of a midi etc. And you guys just make something that works and is catchie as hell. damn

My gba game and source code can be found here: https://github.com/timostrating/Ludumdare46 Any feedback or pointers on where to start with "non advance" gameboy development are appreciated.

Wonderful! Great!

I like that the egg is very fragile while being very agile. For it was challenging and fun

Oh wow, this *feels* like something that could be found on a actual cartridge back then, if you know what I mean. Great job!

THAT. WAS. AWESOME!!!
This game is simply brilliant!
I need to know. Are the levels procedurals?!
If yes, then you deserve to win, really.
Congrats, I am running out of word, all of this is perfect.

best game ive played so far, this could be a commercial standalone game. awesome job

Easily one of the best games I've played so far. Instantly took me back to the GameBoy days -- amazing job with the aesthetic all around!

This game was THE BOMB, man! Seriously, great, great work! I made a game with a 4 color pallet before, so I know how it can be challenging, and your art is on point! Also, very catchy music! I like this a lot!

This game is great! Music was so awesome I didn't even notice the lack of other sound effects until level 7. That level game me a *lot* of time to think about my life choices. Rage quit on level 8. 10/10

Great idea, great graphisms, great music!

Super challenging, but a lot of fun. Simple gameplay that's easy to pick up - so that's great. And the music definitely carries the game really well without any sound effects. It doesn't miss them much at all. I feel like the game's overall strength came from how well all of the art, gameplay, music and styling was so on-brand. There was a clear aesthetic and stylistic choice you made and I think you drove it home really well! :smile:
I found the music was a little bit jumpy on a couple of occasions, and there were definitely times when jumping that my position seemed to jump, rather than my movement being smooth. I believe this was as a result of collisions with walls or additional springs, but it's hard to say exactly at speed. Loved it overall! Could not beat it though. Haha

I had great fun playing this game on an emulator

👍very nice

You did an amazing job on this game, it is definitely one of the best i tried. It is very fun to play, levels are clever and the music is awesome. All stylistic choices are homogenous and consistent (and I loved them). It really feels like a finished Game Boy experience!

I played your game after you reviewed mine and now I know why you love trampolines so much jejej. Really good game, I loved it, very polished and fun

Very good entry!! The only bad thing is i don't feel like.. how can i say.. urgency to stay alive. I won't rate it low tho because i see you are using the theme metaphorically.. keeping GBA alive hahaha. I love the music. It's very fitting and it almost seems when you're playing for the first time that de devs and music makers worked side-by-side, i swear the music was perfectly cut when i died for the first 3 times hahaha

Good luck!

BEST music in the Jam. It also perfectly resembles an old game and the animations and overall objective is amazing. Nice job!!

I love it, its like one of my favorite gameboy games! Challenging but fair! Love the music and the level design!!! I will play it till the end!

An adorable game! The graphics and sound are on point. The mechanics are simple to understand, and the gameplay is challenging yet fun! I like that the levels are constructed to teach you how everything works through gameplay.
Ran just in a couple of troubles:
* the webpage wouldn't load for me until I turned vpn on
* had some trouble understanding how to start the game, but to be fair, I didn't read the controls beforehand)

I loved, very nice that it can be played on the gameboy, the levels were difficult but really fun!

Really funny and challenging! I have died a lot of times but I will keep trying. It's easy to learn how to play but hard to master, which is a good point in my opinion. The art and sound are lovely, too. Great game.

Really a very challenging game!
I LOVED the entire 8-bit style soundtrack. I also really enjoyed the game being made to play on the gameboy. I will download the rom to play in my emulator.

Congratulations! A game that should be officially released!

I never thought of playing as an egg. I love eggs. In every way :egg:
Nice Job!

It's a little confusing as to how high a fall can kill you. Still, the graphics and audio were damn nice. The game was a lot of fun overall and is a nice entry. Great job man :)

If someone told me they'd found an obscure lost GameBoy cart with this game on it I might have believed them. Very well done.

The real proof is that when people ask me what game they should try and I skim the list of all the game I've played, this one jumps to the top.

ETA: Thanks for bringing this for me to play on stream! I really enjoyed it. You can find the highlight at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/606399389

@marcmagus You are a true hero! ❤️

It's hard to believe that in 2020 someone makes games for Game Boy. Awesome!

I love the interpretation of the theme (especially the meta aspect of keeping Gameboy games alive by making more). The music is great, the aesthetics fit, and the physics feel really good! nice entry!

Great game! We, actually, had the similar ideas for the jam, but it my game the mechanics is slightly different.

Your game feels much more polished than mine, though =)
Great job!

YESS. THIS IS A MASTERPIECE AND GJ ON MAKING IT A .GB FILE !! KUDOS

This is a nicely polished game. The platformer physics are solid for the most part, very rarely janky when I hit the edge of a platform or a launchpad. What I mind the most is probably that a lot of the challenge is "trial and error", i.e. you are almost guaranteed to die in a new part of the level because you need to know how to react to obstacles ahead of time. Checkpoints or a way to see the whole level would be of some help, although with the emphasis on momentum it is hard to do this. The music was great, even though after dying many many times it got almost annoying and overly cheery for my mood. The graphics are nice and suitable for GB. As was pointed out in one stream, the 3D effect on crates might be a little bit confusing at first. The optional feather pickups probably made me die a lot more than I needed to, but I just **had** to have them! Some indication of overall progress would be nice, after a bunch of levels I was just hoping to see a victory screen. Good job overall!

Hello from Spelkollektivet! It blows my mind you made this for the game boy! Great game and awesome art!

Fantastic game! I was super frustrated with it almost the entire time. Perhaps its just personal preference getting in the way. You've managed to make, what feels like, a real gameboy game in only a few days. A little bit of variation in the music would've been nice, by the end of my playthrough it felt like the track was drilling into my head haha :P

Crazy to see a game boy game here ^^
Looks good, music is good, the acceleration on the egg feels slow but that fits the game's general tone.

Nice little game. Initially thought it was just made to look like a gameboy game, but then saw the linker in the tools. Mighty impressive. Music is fantastic

Hello! Your game was played during my stream!

If you want to know the timestamp of when your game was played you can see it in this spreadsheet:
https://tinyurl.com/yau8hjzn

And then look in my latest videos and find your game being play (after the current stream ends)
https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos

This is absolutely amazing game!

While some people would mention that it's hard and checkpoints would make it easier - not convinced you'd need it. No, this kinda game you'd play as a kid for hours to go, trying the same level over and over and over until you master it - and then you show your friends how cool you are :)

It's a game of trial and error, you have to bump multiple times into obstacles, fall from a top, etc. until you learn the level layout by heart.

This may be frustrating, but it's part of the experience - and I think you guys nailed it. The gamebow old-school kinda game - 10/10

Thank you for this. (*nostalgic tears*)

Haha this is cool, not only technically but as a game too! Great blog post on the main page. Really fun to play, music makes me want to line dance. Good gameplay, I like that you start in a high place so the first thing you learn is that you die if you fall too high. Good design all around and runs nice and fast too!

Impressive entry! It fits the theme like a glove, it is FUN, it has lots of content with top-notch quality and it works flawlessly in a console (I started playing in the browser then I realised I have a GBA that could run the rom :D)

The game is difficult, but in the right way. Visuals are clear, controls are tight and I very rarely felt cheated (at most the first time I discovered a new section of a level). Almost every time I died I knew what I had to do next time. In fact, I felt compelled to do so.

Graphics were great and the music track was super catchy.

In summary, one of the best, most solid games I've tried this edition. Amazing job!

PS: Like some other commenters, I'm really curious about the code :smiley:

God DAAAAMN!!
This game is better than at least 80% of the Gameboy titles I played as a kid. I'm glad you put in a level skip, or I'd never have seen all of them... Fantastic level design, but I got stuck on about half. Had a blast finding the secret easy route to complete level 6 though. ;)
Of course, if I'd had purchased the game I'd have played it to death getting to the end rather than skipping and that would have been just fine - I think the difficulty is exactly right.

Which brings me to the next point: This is practically a finished game. Seriously, all that's missing is some sound effects, a timer and some scoring. Maybe a few more levels... Then slap it in a cartridge and start working on some box art - you're done.

Very, very very well done.

This is an amazing technical feat, I thought you guys had just done a game in the graphical style of a GB. Wow. I just lost 20 minutes reading all about it. Wayyyy over my head, but fun reading. I remember someone in my dorm getting one of the Original Gameboys back in 1991, amazing to think there are people still developing for it.

I couldn't get past the first level, but the graphics, clever arts style with the limited palette, and the epic chiptune version of Bear Necessities were very well done.

The Gameboy aesthetic is very well done and I really liked the music. Good job on this one. :)

Heya! I played your game on-stream over the weekend. Thank you for sharing it with me!

It's extremely well done - I am *sure* you are sick of hearing nothing but praise for your game :wink: but I am truly beyond impressed. You've created an *exceptionally* unique and fun game within some monumental limitations.

The music, @starerik , is fantastic - I mean you nailed the genre for this particular type of game. And I would be very interested in whatever software you used to create it!

If I had to pick on one thing - I would wonder if you could add bit more "juice" to the landing when the egg hits the haystack... I have no idea what the limitations of the Gameboy entail - but a little camera shake would be nice.

Well done, folks! A very fun game!

Everything about this game is great except the fact that the gameplay can get frustrating very fast.
It's more of a threading the needle type puzzle game masquerading as a plarformer.
My mind is telling me this is a type of game I'm well familiar with, yet minor drops outright kills the character. I think maybe it needs to have more checkpoints (maybe as part of an easy mode) It's a good thing you added a skip level feature for this build.

Also, the heystack should be more obvious, it seems like a part of the background like the windows and the work tools.

Anyways I think I'm coming off as a bit harsh because of how much this title impressed me, you guys absolutly nailed the Gameboy aesthetics, sound (which was fantastic on its own), and the design philosophy.
The fact that you actually released a Gameboy build is the cherry on top.

This is really great, bravo!

Looks great, plays well. Not much to complain about, it was difficult and the lack of checkpoints makes it harder but lets be real - game boy games from back in the day were hard, too. I like it a lot!

Impressive, just throwed back to my childhood.... Well done on your terrific entry :) loved it!

Shockinly polished, the only thing missing are some sfx for the springs and egg break sound etc. Great art, butter smooth controlls and a soundtrack which got stuck in my head

Well made game!! really enjoy playing the game. Great job! :smile_cat:

This game is legitimately evil and robbed me of many hours. If I were a kid this is exactly what I would want on a gameboy cartridge. I'm so glad we no longer live in a world of such tiny viewports lol. Frustratingly evil, but amazing nonetheless.

This is amazing! Despite of the simplicity of the control, each level has its own design feels new. Also the music is so cool! Great job.

Really blows my mind that this is actual game boy software. Awesome!
The aesthetic is really nice and polished and the tune is very catchy. Too bad there's no sound.
The game play itself was interesting as well, though, it was hard to see at which height the egg would break or if there was damage building up even from the short drops. Sound would've helped in that regard. Or some visual changes to the sprite itself.

Still, awesome entry and very interesting from the development side of things.

Ha, this is Brill. Really loved playing this game and if it was 1983 would have bought this on my gameboy. I gave you full 5's for this game.

This is fantastic. Totally brought me back to playing the original Crazy Castle featuring Bugs Bunny on my Game Boy brink back in elementary.

I don't think I need to explain how great this is. You hit the nail on the head with this one, and provided a GB ROM to boot. This great! Well done!

Ultra polished looking game! It shows you have experience with the GameBoy. The fact that it actually can be played in a game boy is an ultra plus. Good level design. Sound feedback would have been nice when hitting the ground. Had a lot of fun playing it. Congratulations!

I spent way too much time on this one, haha. Made it all the way to the second half of the last level before giving up. It was frustrating, but in a way reminded me of why we all play these games in the first place; just listening to some good ol GB chiptunes while trying a level over and over again...good times.

I think some of the levels could use little tweaks here and there of course, but if I had to critique the design as a whole, I think that the frequency of having to make blind jumps and/or guess at the next obstacle's position isn't super great. (granted, it's authentic to how games used to be designed, but we've come a long way since then!)

I think if you intend this to be part of the process of playing the game ("you don't know what's coming, you need to trial and error to figure it out!"), then I'd personally recommend slightly shorter levels; the later levels in particular can feel extremely punishing when you finally get through a difficult section only to fail the next one because you literally have no idea where the safe landing spot is.

If you don't want this to be part of the process of playing the game, I'd try to find a way to scale down the game as a whole so that more of the level fits onto the screen. An alternative would be to build in some visual indicators and/or clever level design to inform the player of where the upcoming designs are ahead of time (e.g. have the player roll underneath a tricky section going right, then have them navigate through it going to the left), but I'm not sure how feasible that is.

Of course I understand a lot of these are not really design changes that are feasible to make at this point, just throwing out some food for thought for next time maybe!

Props all around! The soundtrack really helped keep me playing, haha. Was this done in LSDJ or ...?

Everything is great except level/game design. While it was very well made, a lot of what determined your success was unpredictable movement, and safety areas you were not yet aware of. Perhaps this type of somewhat unfair level design was an intentional callback to gameboy era games, but I think the game would be more fun if these things were ironed out and it felt more "fair" to play. That or add flag checkpoints partway through each level.

Finally it could use just a handful of simple sounds effects.

Impressive work regardless.

@ddrkirbyisq Thanks a lot for liking the music! :smile: It was not made in LSDJ, no. LSDJ is not natively capable of converting a song into code that could be used in a Game Boy game. The programmer of this game @frasse made a computer software that I use to make the music. Funny enough it started out as a tool to convert LSDJ .sav files into GB code, but evolved into a whole other thing.

Makes sense!

This is not a Game Boy game. It's way too beautiful for that :D

Thank you for bringing a part of my childhood back! Together with the fact this is made for the Game Boy, the design decision to not make checkpoints available and let the game be played by trial and error really, really makes it an authentic experience. Trying, and trying and trying until you are the absolute master of the game seems like a somewhat forgotten idea these days. I love it, and as soon as I get my hands on a Game Boy be sure I will play it on there too!

All the good things have been said and I can't add any critique. Phenomenal work. Thank you all!

great idea and flawless execution thereof

Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615928274?t=9h29m55s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

A Game boy game ? :D Are you serious !?! Haha wow I initially thought it was inspired by game boy art and style, but wow then I read again the description and the comments, and I found the .gb rom ! Hahah you guys are crazy good :D The music is 10/10, the art 10/10, the gameplay && difficulty == gameboy. Amazing entry ! Thank you for the nostalgia trip. I felt like I was playing a bonus level of Super Mario Bros Land 2 or a Bugs bunny nes/gb game. Great job ! :)

This is great! I really liked how it looked and felt just like a real GameBoy game. The music and art was amazing and I really enjoyed the concept of the game and learning how to control the egg's momentum. Great job!

Wow. Solid jam entry.
It even has the genuine Nintendo butalness of restarting the level as soon as you die, haha.
I swear that sometimes when I restart a level and hold down a direction I go a slightly different distance through the air (there's only a small difference between landing totally okay and splat).
The main thing that could have improved would definitely be a death animation/sound/graphic/screenshake. But just nitpicking. Great job!

Wow, I gotta give you guys mad props for making an actual full-blown Game Boy game in just 72 hours. That's amazing. This is really tricky - the lack of checkpoints and small screen size mean it takes a lot of trial-and-error and memorisation before you can complete each level - but that only adds to the retro feel, and gives you a great sense of satisfaction when you finally get it right. The momentum-based gameplay really appeals to me as a Sonic the Hedgehog fan, and the music is catchy as hell.

Fantastic entry! Well done!

Very cool, instantly got flashback to playing on a gameboy! The music is also very much on point. The only thing I'm missing is the egg cracking apart and the innards splashing around.

Now this is an expertly crafted piece of GameBoy software. Very clear and elegant mechanics, the controls feel super responsive and the presentation is a treat. I really wish that this game would've come out on GameBoy when I was a kid because it looks and plays like a full-fledged GameBoy original from the golden era. Amazing job! 👏 Here's my latest stream featuring the game, by the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP012VKTPV8

really complete feeling game. I think it was wonderfully presented - but the simple controls were very well implemented. The mechanic too was simple but some nice level design yielded some enjoyable experiences.

Here is the VOD of me playing your game on stream: (Timecode 7:25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjDKYcRkBKQ

Wow, congrats on releasing a 'full-on' gameboy game! Very nice, I liked it a lot!