Not sure if it's just me but I can't get any input registered on the menu so can't start the game.

@taffaz Are you playing on the browser? I believe the emulator on Itch uses the enter key as start. If that doesn't work there is a ROM and emulator included in the source code package in the downloads :)

@vectrex28 Yeah I was, I tried Enter but it didn't work. I just downloaded it and gave it a go in the emulator. I know the NES wasn't famous for holding your hand but it would have been nice to have a nice easy starter level as it was a bit tricky to get used to the keys with the pressure of the wall. Great game though.

This is very unique.

Itch.io version doesn't seem to work. Will try later when I have access to an emulator.

@Taffaz Could've been my bad, I tried reuploading the emulator and it seems to work fine now :D
Either way, thanks for the feedback :)

Cool game i like style and i will try it later on my raspberry

@paroxysmal Hah, you got there right in the middle of technical difficulties. Try again now. If that still doesn't work then I'll try figuring something out tomorrow or something

@vectrex28 Yeah just checked and it works perfectly on Itch now.

Really cool for a compo game, looks amazing for NES homebreow too! Music works well too! Unfortunately the gameplay is quite hard to get a grasp on thanks to the modal control toggle, hard to design around the limited amount of buttons on NES/FMC

Super cool game, love the graphics+audio and the fact that you made a NES game :D

tbh I found it quite hard, I think the speed the crusher goes is good once you've internalized the controls but when I'm just starting out I found I was mostly struggling to mash the right buttons instead of thinking about where to place blocks lol. maybe I just suck though :)

Really nice sprite work! Decent amount of levels, all pretty unique and satisfying to solve. Switching between block types is a bit clunky to do as fast as the game sometimes requires you to. Might've made more sense to use "select" to passively switch, so that "A" can instantly place/remove a block. A way to instantly restart would be nice as well, might be weird with the life system but it can get irritating having to sit and wait over a minute before you can try again. Overall, it's pretty good

Place Crates Wisely has some sort of teleporter bug on the 2nd teleport? or was it the third. Anyways When I moved left out of the teleporter it kept teleporting me back.

It's you again! I love your LD entries so much. Best NES creator in LD community for sure.
I adore the graphics, music and overall vibes. Gameplay is pretty well done and really fits the NES theme. Keep up the good work my friend.

@benjamin-gare Yeah the teleporters are a bit finicky sadly, you can jump over them to avoid getting TP'd back though

Great looking game! I liked gameplay mechanics, music and pretty much everything. Sadly this game is too difficult for me. First level could be stupid easy so everyone could get hang of the mechanics. I can't believe you made all this during one weekend, great work

Nice entry, too bad I don't own a NES :)
I like the graphics. They game is hard :D

Enjoyable game, love the graphics. Great entry!

Making an NES game in 48 hours is probably the coolest thing you can do for a jam. It has a real authentic feel to it too.

Great entry! I really liked the music, it was very fitting. (I'm so glad to see you doing that, too!) I think I've said it before but you've really developed a unique graphical style as well - I know your game before looking at the name at this point. I also really like the mechanic you went with - it's super clever.

I will say though, it is _hard_! I really couldn't get past 3 levels with keyboard controls. I got through a lot more with a controller, but for some reason I really couldn't get the hang of them. (Fair warning: I'm quite sick right now, so take my difficulty complaint with a grain of salt!)

I do appreciate that every level is a checkpoint, so it's not super punishing at least - I have save states so I may pick it back up later. My one minor complaint: please, please give me a way to give up and retry/die! In some of the levels it takes like 20 seconds for the level to kill you if you miss placing a block. (I ended up save-scumming to avoid this :sweat_smile:) That aside, this was a fun entry. Always great to see more retro games in the jam!

I got used to the management for a very long time, in general, I was reminded of my childhood!)

The fact that it's a compo game blows my mind! Game feels very polished and charming. Art is top notch and I liked the music a lot. I wish the game was a bit easier in the early phases so I could have tested the mechanics better and got a good grip on how to play. Had fun nonetheless!

Really cool to see a NES game in LD! Looks great, but I couldn't even finish the first level because I didn't figure out how placing the blocks works.

@arzi Pressing B switches to placing mode, then you select crates/super crates with select/Up/down, and press A to place a box :D

Love the graphics, and it's super cool that you made a NES game! My two issues were that you couldn't pause it and the controls were really difficult for me to use. I'd rather drop boxes immediately with the B key rather than have a sort of separate menu come up and lock me in.

Otherwise, really fun!

Hahaah is hard! Very, very nice retro atmosphere, and nice work on the music! I’m impressed, very good work

You can probably sell this. Awed by the amount of polish in it, amazing stuff, best of luck!

The game is quite challenging. My brain melts then I try to place the crate. The concept is nice. Graphics, music and SFX are solid. I would like to make first levels a bit easier, e.g. make the wall to move slower. So it will give the player a bit of the time to get used to the controllers.

Good effort but the crate placing UI really needs work. Like Mika34, my brain just melted trying to put the crate in the right place.

Loved the graphics, the music... Also, I liked that "trick" of using a wall of 8x16 sprites to hide the bg updates :)

Unfortunately it was too hard for me (this may be more of a "me" issue 😅), maybe it would be a bit easier if there were a more direct way to place the crates (e.g. B to place a crate, Select to change the type of the next crate to be placed)

Pretty surprised I was able to finish the game, some of these levels are very unforgiving! I imagine this game will seem incredibly unapproachable for some, but past that, I did find the puzzles to be enjoyable in general. :)

Like many other people said, the UI to place crates is a mess. I guess it can be understood when you have time to, but not when a crusher approaches you. I got used to the UI by learning key combinations by heart.

- To put/remove a crate : the key combination is X-Z-X.
- To change crate type : the combination is X-up-wait-what-which-button-is-it-no-not-that-one-oh-sh*t-I-died. Then, the selected crate type is kept between two games, so you can now place the wanted crate by a classical X-Z-X.

I would have chosen this key mapping :

- up : jump. (isn't that natural for a lot of games ?)
- X : put/remove normal crate
- Z : put/remove super crate

I didn't finished the game. It was too hard and too frustrating for me, because of all the problems previously told : messy controls, buggy teleporters, no possibility to immediatly restart a game.

I didn't manage to figure out the cat movements. It does not seem to always follow the same wall. I would have loved to take time to understand it, but the crusher and the lack of pause urges you to try random things fast, instead of recover your calm and think about the behavior of the game elements.

In this game, we have to be fast and have good skills in agility, and at the same time we have to be intelligent and find tricks to solve the puzzling levels. This is a horrible cocktail that rarely works in games. Your level design looks really good, and I'm sure some levels are really smart and well-polished. But all your efforts are spoiled by the frustration of having to be agile and intelligent at the same time.

Maybe you could fix that by clearly choosing the type of each level : some are fast and skillfull, others are calm and need reflexion. The calm levels should have a very slow crusher (or even no crusher at all).

To sum up : I did not really enjoyed this game. But I remember having played Antenna Antics at the previous Ludum Dare. You seem to regularly create NES games, and you begin to have a graphic and gameplay style of your own, which is interesting. I will definitely play your entries of the next Ludums, and I will try to find the time to test your previous entries.

See ya !

This is the second time I play one of your NES LD entries. It's always amazing to see games made for older platforms and what you have done under the compo rules is impressive. It makes me wish I had a NES linker to play it on the real hardware on a CRT.

I had a hard time learning how to place/remove/switch crate type. The controls are a bit awkward. It took me a lot of tries to clear some of the levels the first time. Some of them requires tight timings right from the beginning, knowing what to do beforehand and to not mess up crate placements. Continues are nice for that first phase of die and retry. Some of the latter levels which don't look like intended breathers are unexpectedly easy compared to how hard are some of the earlier levels.

After some time, after knowing the solution to every level and what level comes next, I managed to 1CC it with a score of 43840.

I think it should at least show the level for some time before you can move, or have a way to pause it. You don't have the time to think about how to solve it. Also an instant die button would have been nice. Well that's a lot of stuff for a NES controller but maybe with B=instant place/remove, up=switch type and select=die it would play more fluidly.

Nice game, amazing that you were able to make such a polished game for the NES so quickly.

The control scheme is hard to get used to, but since you only have two main buttons to work with there's not much that can be done. Maybe freeze the screen when in box placing mode?

Someday I'll learn how to make games for retro consoles...