Wretched Blade

The year is 2023. Humankind has colonized the galaxy. One young woman, Ceres Grove, sets out on her own, in search of adventure. There are thousands of planets and stars yet to be visited. Her first stop: Epsilon R-34.

Upon landing she felt drawn many miles to a clearing where she found, laying atop a bed of stones, a sword of emerald. It called out to her, and she couldn’t help but to feel it’s hilt in the palm of her hand. The blade glowed gently, as if it were pleased. That is when she blacked out… and the Wretched Blade had taken her.  

If you take a look at the instruction manual I made for this game, It explains a few things that you should know, just like a real NES game! You can download it here as well. It explains button combinations and what they do, so that can be pretty handy. Plus it has all the stuff you’d find in a real NES manual.

It is recommended that you use a controller for this game. Right now keyboard controls are not customizable, so feel free to use  keymapper of some sort to make the controls comfortable for you.  
Nevertheless, keyboard Controls are:
Dpad = Arrows
A = Z
B = Space
Start = Escape
Select = Tab
Toggle Window Size = Backspace
***KEYBOARD CONTROLS WILL NOT WORK IF THERE IS A GAMEPAD PLUGGED INTO YOUR COMPUTER***

SPOILERS: If you want to explore the game and find out what it has to offer in the way of secrets and stuff, skip this section. Otherwise I explain what is required to get 100% completion.
-There is a bonus for getting 100% completion (collecting all 20 memories, all 4 power-ups, all 4 health upgrades, finding the 3 secret stashes, and beating 2 bosses).

-There is an alternate ending if you collect all 20 memories.

-There is a secret bonus that is pretty rad, and I hope someone finds it, but I don’t want to tell you how to. I’ll just say that you need to collect all 20 memories and then do something else. But once you get it… hold down the Action/Blade button and press Select.
END OF SPOILERS

This game was designed for the 2018 NESmaker HYPE Jam. The rules were to make a game that looks and plays like an NES game. The resolution must be 240x256 (or multiples thereof), the colors must be from the limited NES color pallet. The controls must be made up of 2 face buttons, directional buttons, and the start and select buttons, like an NES controller.

I did that, but also made sure the game was NES HARD... and I also made sure all of the original music and sound effects I made for this game are 100% accurate to the NES, and I also did my best to make sure that no sprites contained more than 4 colors, as the NES could not do that.  I also tried to add little imperfections that you’d find in some NES games, flickering and such, and in general it’s certainly not perfect, there are some bugs. I’m very proud of how this game feels. I even made an old NES style instruction Manual that you can download here as well! In fact it might be good because the game doesn’t tell you what to do, or what is happening, just like old NES games! Give it a quick read through so you don’t get stuck!

I did most of the bad artwork. Pretty much anything good was taken from artist “FiveAsOne” on OpenGameArt.com, most enemies, and Lilis are by him, using the CC0 license. Though I had to recolor all of his art to fit the NES color pallet. But I still love it, thanks so much to him! All the environmental stuff was mine.

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