Apricot Kernel by riley9

discover the past of your robot-friend and help it to recover its memories and deliver enough electricity to keep your friend alive
plz be kind because it has gone through a lot already !!
best played in full-screen mode i think :3!
play the game on itch down below!! or right here: https://riley9.itch.io/apricot-kernel
(i can't seem to embed it here right now and i'm too tired to fix it at this moment ^^')
flash warnings: while touching stairs (changing floors) and interacting with a mirror


| itch.io | https://riley9.itch.io/apricot-kernel |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/apricot-kernel |
Ratings
| Overall | 451th | 3.703⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 738th | 3.271⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 454th | 3.5⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1081th | 3.171⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 469th | 3.875⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 353th | 3.583⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 494th | 3.258⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 137th | 4.111⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 54🗳️ | 83🗨️ |
For the last ludum dare we tried to make a somewhat similar, linear story-based pico game, and there is surely a lot, we can take from you here, thanks!
A few ideas that came up during playing: I know, how hard it is to make something visible in pico, but the progress bar (healt and energy and stuff) at the bottom now does not really let the player know about its state, as it is not really visible.
The screen shake is cool, I loved it! Overall it is a very good job, congrats! Oh and I liked the ocean pert, where I was trying to find bugs by walking off the screen, but it turned out it was a feature!
Hats off! <3
The football field looked awesome, and it was a cute idea to get into the heart as well.
Great job!
I wish I could leave you a rating.
But I still really loved this entry !
@cinterre @zahkros
@bartalomew
@waptaincaffles
@tofucat
@tomrijnbeek
@jimmymcginger
@zerovirus
@obe-dot
thank you all for your kind words <3 this really means a lot to me!!
@kosmik123
i'll adress some of the bugs tomorrow for sure!
@tomtomgome
for my next pico-8 game i want to look into custom fonts definitely! i didn't had time to implement one sadly
@zahkros
the interface was a little hard to implement for me, so i just used tiles and the map for that, which made it a bit less interface-y (i hope you know what i mean ^^') -> i wanted to implement some animations there too, but the time run out in the end! i had to spend a lot of time with importing the text, because my dialogue system is very unoptimized, haha
@cheesepencil
that's an incredible compliment, thank you!!!!
I did spot a few points of clunky dialogue and one odd choice that the protag made. But i guess that's to be expected since there's so little time to finetune the writing.
The font was a bit hard to read.

The game itself was nicely paced, it went on a lot longer than i expected and I enjoyed the elements where you played with the UI, especially going into the textbox and interacting with the interface. At the beginning especially I really had some difficulty with the graphics I will admit, it was quite hard to parse what was what and what was going on, I could only really find the player when they were moving. The only other things was it was occasionally frustrating that if I backtracked, I would have to go through every trigger again when I passed it. I was able to get used to these two things, but it initially took me out of it.
Overall though I'm glad I spent some time with this game, it was really nice to go through and experience the story you created!
thank you so much for playing!! i love pico-8 games too :>
@red-dino
wow your words mean a lot to me!! thank you <3
@saltysa
thank you! and you indeed reached the end! you managed to give the roboter its name and it doesn't need to be controlled by you anymore :3 and yes! i'm also not satisified with the font :o
@ghodan
thank you for your kind words !! much appreciated :)
@porcus-pie
thank you too for all of your words!! i love that you could connect with the underlying trans theme <3 i am dealing with these things - but to me, this game turned out with a really positive tone in the end that makes me feel good about the future. thank you as well for mentioning the two elements you find frustrating with the game! i will keep them in mind for my next project =D
@naive-games thank you!! i hope you will explore more pico-8 games in the future :) they are small treasures
i think you set the mood really well, and the fact that you decided to actually tell something in a game jam... in a very limited amount of time.. wow, you did an excellent job<3 congrats
When I do comment, most of the time I have more to say, but this isn't about the particular mechanics, graphics or music or what have you. Words always seem to definitive to describe something as multi-faceted as emotions. So I suppose a short message about that it made me 'feel something' (even though I'm like 99% sure I'm cis) will have to do.
Congratulations on the great work and the awesome game! ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡
I wish the dialogue buttons would be consistent so I don't need to switch key just to end a dialogue.
As for Christian art — it is violent but that is the point. How else can you depict crucifixion? But depressing, no, not at all, if you read it the right way.
One improvement you could make is to reduce the text — I think the game would be more fun with concise dialogue. Then, each word carries more weight. That being said, overall it’s a very imaginative game.