I don't find the theme on your game but like the old school graphics
Great Job

It has a very happy atmosphere, the art is very good. It also has a lot of content. I did not expect the screen to scroll, so the first time it was needed it took a while for me to do it. I got stuck in a tree in a big level too, but playing it again was fun nontheless. The mechanics were explained masterfully by level design, trapping enemies and desyncronizing them. I enjoyed the game overall and it far exeeded my expectations. I got 30 gems, but i think i missed one :)

Thank you for playing! I did purposely add an extra gem to make it less likely that players would be stuck with the bad ending on first playthrough. If this were a full-length game I would likely not do this, and have a level select, etc, but I digress.


As for the tree thing, that stinks! I'm glad you were able to enjoy the game anyway. I did find a spot where that could happen and force you to restart - I just published a bugfix.


(ps: If anyone else encounters something like this, screenshots are super helpful!)

Cool game with a solid mechanic and a surprising number of levels and puzzles. It's always nice to see people developing for odd or retro platforms. Great job!

Extremely cool making a NES game. Impressive amount of content and a super nice old school link-to-to-pasty-vibes all around. If I'm going to say anything bad, then maybe it was a tad long? Since the mechanics feels a bit repetitive at times and it's quite easy to auto-solve the levels without all much thinking. Still super cool and a very great game!

Very impressed by this, I can't believe you made an NES game in 48 hours...this is super cool! I think the music could use a little work. But thats just imo. Great game!

 If you go up from the map below this one, you can get stuck! Having a restart option on the pause screen could help deal with this. That said, this is very, very impressive! Multiple enemy types, programming for a 35-year old console, strong Zelda: Oracle of Seasons vibes, even though I got stuck I'm going to rate this very highly. Well done!

That was really really cool! The only complaint really is that the movement likes to force you into the grid, but you can still move between grid squares. Otherwise I had a blast. The music was connected to the mechanics in a really satisfying way, and I wish I had an NES to give this an authentic playthrough. Great work!

This is a fun little gem (please forgive me for starting off with such a horrendous pun). Took me a second to figure out the mechanic, but it's a very nice take on adventure or maybe puzzle games. As soon as I realize things scrolled I suddenly got really into it. Very cool all around!

Dude! How did you make a NES game in 48 hours? Its even better than most NES games that were made by huge corperations in like 2 years.

I really liked this! There were a few bugs with enemy movement, and I got stuck during a screen transition which was unfortunate. I had a few problems with tiles being unclear if they were barriers or not. Discovering that I could screen transition was awesome, though :) I ended up enjoying myself, even though I've acquired a grudge against smiling blue blobs.

This would have been really cool to play on a Nes, but alas I'm forced to settle for the web-emulator today.
Definitely a cool project :D Reminded me about playing The Adventures of Lolo as a kid ^^
Unfortunately my session was cut short when I transitioned into a new frame and got stuck to a rock that was on the edge, but I definitely enjoyed myself up until that point ^^

Awesome. Cool that you built all the tooling.

Fun game with innovative game mechanics. I managed to get stuck by moving up from the area below (see screenshot), but otherwise it was very enjoyable and being an actual NES game it had those authentic retro vibes :)

Thank you for this game! It was really fun to play, and there is a lot of content here for only 48 hours of work! Really nicely done! Unfortunately my character got stuck inside a rock, and I could not move at all anymore, and I did not feel like doing all the levels again. Otherwise I would have definitely played it until the end! (I got 19 gems, so juding from the other comments I saw a good chunk of the game :p)
The only points of feedback are that at first I did not notice I was standing on one of those teleport places when I pressed Z, so I was confused for a while how I should swap layers. (The teleport spots also dont stand out so much.) Secondly, I did not realize you could walk out of the screen, but I did it by accident after a while.
Great job! Really enjoyed playing your game!

Liked the retro art and sound track (pretty necessary with this being an NES game). Puzzles were decently designed. I had one instance where knights got out of sync and I couldn't pass without dying and restarting. Other than that, well done. Great work for 48h.

Wow, those nostalgic vibes! Feeled that, cool decision to make it styled like NES. Nice concept, great execution.

Wow, so much positive feedback from everyone! Thank you! This is the part of Ludum Dare that's always the most fun for me; playing a bunch of games and hearing honest, well-intentioned feedback.

First off, I'm sorry so many people hit the bug with getting stuck in trees and rocks. I've just published another new build that fixes the spot I think most people are referring to. The screenshots were hugely helpful in identifying the problem spot! Thank you both @bassguitarbill and @assertfailure for those.

@bassguitarbill A restart option is a fantastic idea, and I've done that in the past. I can't believe I let that slip through the cracks here. If people keep reporting getting stuck I may add it, but I'm struggling with whether I can get away with calling that a bugfix.

Someone commented on the music needing work, and I have to agree. Music's always been one of my weaker spots, and I've gotten out of practice lately. It would have helped if the music keep its position when transitioning between zones, but the engine doesn't support that and I couldn't hack it together in time.


Thanks again for all of the feedback everyone!

I enjoyed the puzzles, and I enjoyed the pixel art. I'm intrigued by the novelty of having an LD game playable on the NES...

A couple critiques: it would be nice if the dimension-shifting sparkles stood out more starkly against the background terrain. Sometimes it was kinda difficult to find them.

I didn't like the sections where there were agility/timing puzzles coupled with multiple areas, because I'm clumsy and would die and have to redo a large chunk of gameplay.

It's obvious you put a lot of energy and love into this, and I enjoyed it!

Great little game, and it's always fun to see another NES submission. I managed to get all gems, woohoo!

I for one think the music and the little variations between the different layers is pretty cool, and being totally incompetent when it comes to making music, I thinl you did a great job making something relatively decent on the NES.

I also liked the character sprites, they were pretty cute. The BG tiles need a bit of work however.

Couple nitpicks though: For one, some of the tiles are hard to discern whether or not they're solid, so I often found myself trying to go somewhere that was solid.
Secondly, there were a few minor glitches, such as jerky character movement and a frame of garbled screen (Gotta be careful with nametables when scrolling ;) ) - But that is understandable in a 48 hour game.
Finally, as someone else pointed out, I didn't really see the theme until the very end with the creepier layers - it looked more like a parralel dimension thingy rather than going deeper and deeper.

Either way, a stellar submission (And I wouldn't be surprised if you got a better score than myself this time, we gotta compare our scores like we did in LD44 haha)

Thanks for the feedback!

The tiles definitely need some help around what's solid- that's feedback I've seen a few times now. Honestly I was thinking about that a lot in the final hours of making the game, but other things ended up taking priority. (Making the levels reward you for using mechanics was a huge struggle up to the last minute...)

The enemy movement is a bug with nes-starter-kit. I need to figure out how to handle enemy AI better, but I've never really spent the time.

About scores, I dunno, your game is some fierce competition. I'm pretty sure you one-upped your previous entry, and that fared extremely well. I'll be excited to see what the scores say!

The NES master of the light/dark world mechanic returns! I was stumped for the longest time til I realized you can scroll to another screen! Nice work, I am enjoying this one.

Really good work!

I think the obvious first "wow" factor of this game is that it runs on actual NES hardware. You see a lot of LD entries that aim for an "old school style", but you really went the extra mile on making that happen, didn't ya? :D What's more, the game not only runs on the NES hardware, but also feels like something that could have easily come out in the NES era as well. The simple design, the choppy Megaman style screen scrolling, the repetitive chiptune music - it's all as if it came straight out of an NES game designer's rule book. Basically, it really shows that you love this hardware and are very keenly aware of it and how to make something that is not only _on_ the NES, but something that is _for_ the NES.

I enjoyed the game in general, but I do agree with some people here that said that discerning what is solid and what is not was rather difficult. I think this is an issue that also could have easily been in an actual title released back in the day, so in a way it is authentic to the era, however, that doesn't make it suddenly not a problem. It resulted in me quite often flipping a little mindlessly between worlds because I couldn't really easily commit the changes in layout to memory, due to those changes not being visually distinct enough.

Another point: although I like the music, I do feel it gets a bit repetitive and while it is a nice touch to have different music for the different versions, I would suggest to keep it the same tempo throughout, but simply change instrumentation or mood. This is hard, I know, especially with the limited sound waves and channels you can work with on the NES, but as it is, it's a little jarring to switch rapidly between worlds and get totally different tempos and energy levels in the music.

Finally, the death screen is a bit too slow for my liking, especially considering how quickly some of the enemies move sometimes. It is easy to die, so I'd like to be able to quickly get back into it to offset the speed at which my character denigrates out of existence sometimes. I think this balance is something we've picked up as good game design practice over the decades though, so if you want to be technical, this is probably how an 80's NES game would do things :D

Overall, I love your commitment to the NES on all levels. It has made for a great entry! Although this commitment has of course come with a few of the NES' less desirable aspects as well. However, it is easy to overlook them in an otherwise good game. Lovely work!

Thanks for all the feedback. @shell-pirate I really appreciate the detail you went into.

I actually really wanted to do what you described with music, but I couldn't get the music engine I use to cooperate. It doesn't support resuming a song in the middle officially, nor changing out instruments without some serious low-level hacking. (With a more flexible timeframe, this would of course become possible!) I had the tempos aligned when I tried this, but I opted to change them up to try to make it feel more different. It seems like this didn't work, but hey, this is always a learning process.

The death screen feedback definitely hits, as that's usually feedback I have for any harder game I try. I'll keep that in mind going forward.

Thanks again for the detailed feedback - I really appreciate comments like this.

Nice to see more stuff from you!

I was really impressed by your LD44-entry [Depths](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/depths) two years ago, but I don't think I dropped by to comment back then.

I've actually played all your other entries too, and kinda been waiting every LD since whether there will be another little NES-homebrew game to try out :nerd:

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I don't know if I have much else to say about the game that hasn't already been said here. While it wasn't necessarily your strongest effort, I really enjoyed it!


By now you apparently already know about this problem, but I also got stuck in this particular spot :smile:

I used save-states on my second run, just in case!


Apparently I missed one gem. I didn't start a third session today, but I'm quite sure I'll return to hunt the final gem at some point!

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But yeah, keep up doing the stuff you do. NES-homebrew scene is something I enjoy delving into from time to time.

I'll be sure to check out whatever you happen to craft in the future too!

Wow, thank you so much for the support! I'm glad you've been able to enjoy my games. The issue in your screenshot should be fixed in the latest build - I just noticed the download link on my personal site was outdated and fixed it now. I'm sorry you ran into that.

If you're interested, there are actually a few NES games entered into the jam this time. Here's a list: https://ldjam.com/tags/platform/nintendo-famicom . I played both finished games and quite liked them.

Thank you the feedback and support.

Wow! Really a real NES game for an LDjam?!! This is awesome!
I am really liking this game... I have not finished it yet! But I love the little puzzles, the music and the graphics... And that it is actually a real NES game!
By the way I tried it on my Odroid Go and it works flawlessly there, here is a picture!
Great Job!

That's such a cool picture! Thanks for sharing

Holy cow, an NES Game! I just ***had*** to make a Tool Assisted Speedrun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va19po3nohI

Great level design, and seriously great work for making a NES game in 48 hours. Ciao!

@100th-coin This just made my day; dang that's cool! You got some pretty tight movement in there. Thanks for sharing this!

Great entry! It' was so cool to play a NES game again :). Interesting story and gameplay, nice job!

This is a gem! You really did astounding work on the different environments. The "inception" mechanic works really well and I love the few puzzles in there. Also the music! Great stuff!

It's time to close the book on this - I'm really flattered by how well this game ranked.

The dedicated feedback that games get in Ludum Dare really make the event for me. People really care about helping others improve, and it shows.

It's been a fun event. Thank you all one more time for the great feedback, the bug reports, the ideas, the picture of it on a console, and even the TAS video!