Who would have guessed, making a puzzle game with metroidvania-like progression for MS-DOS with CGA graphics didn't really work, but if you want to try it, see here: https://github.com/jani-nykanen/the-curse-of-cga (see "Releases"; requires DOSBox)

I still had fun, though.

Some progress. I'll start a devlog once I decide the name for this game (the working title is "A Tower for Memories").

And back to development hell/heaven! Next thing to add: items to the shop, obviously.

(EDIT: and maybe edit those chains, they look a little silly)

Now you can buy items. I might add a confirmation box that asks if you really want to buy that item. Maybe.

Drawing those propellers took surprising amount of time, but hey, now you know how the palace can be flying!

Next thing to add: gamepad support?

Slow progress is better than no progress, eh?

I added two new enemies (fish & hat), chests and life containers. And pause screen. Plus a lot of bug fixes you cannot see in the gif.

Note that this is still the test area.

Savepoints added. The game uses localStorage for saving, no cloud stuff. The title screen is a placeholder, will have some fancy background later.

I added that "respawn" function to make sure the player won't get stuck...

Version 1.0.0 released

This is the main (stable) release.

Some funky hand-drawn animation. And I really mean hand-drawn animation: I drew the frames on a paper with a pencil and then scanned the result and created the gif.

I implemented simple dialogue boxes. Since the resolution is so small (160x144), the dialogue will be short & compact. And yes, it will be skippable.

(I know, not much a progress, but I'm pretty busy writing my master's thesis right now)

I have had bad luck with my projects this year, so I decided to make a sequel for A Graveyard for Dreams. Maybe I will finish this project one day, maybe not, but at least I have fun making it!

#metroidvania #pixelart #gamedev