Ghost of the Arcade
My entry for the GB Compo 2023. Basically 6 games in one :)
Features:
- 5 different monster-related arcade games
- A story full of dark humor and gaming references
- 32 collectible figures to get from a gacha machine
- Arcade Mode: Just play the arcade games without the story
!!! ONLY FOR GAME BOY COLOR !!!
"GHOSTOFTHEARCADE_update-after-submission7.gb" is the most recent version of the game that adds quite a bit of variety to the arcade games and fixes all known bugs. It's finally a version I am personally happy with. So, unless you are in the jury of the game jam, you will probably want to play this version of the game. If you encounter any bugs, please let me know in the comments.
I plan to finish working on this game once there has been an update made to Platformer Plus / Adventure Plus by hauntology. Currently they cannot be used in the same project. However I need both to actually do everything I have planned :)
Playable games
- Hell Escape:
Demons want to go to heaven, too! Help these cute little monsters to escape hell and reach heaven in a vertical platformer. - Monster Truck Tour:
What?! A 3D-ish racing game, made in GB Studio? They said it was not possible. They were wrong. - M.O.N.S.T.E.R.:
In this somewhat 3D-ish space action game, you play as a member of the Mercenaries' Organisation for Noodle Space Travel and Extraterrestrial Resources (or short M.O.N.S.T.E.R.). Evade asteroids, fight space monsters and fuel your space ship with space noodles. What are space noodles? Shh. Don't ask. - Curse of the Mummy:
You know how in other games monsters come after you? In this game offers a change of roles. You play as a cursed mummy and chase all intruding adventurers in your tomb. - Nessi Ocean Racer:
Nessi, the Loch Ness Monsters, wants to become the world's ocean race champion. Race against all kinds of other sea monsters and upgrade your skills. - All of this is embedded in an adventure game with a story about life, death, monsters and videogames.
Web Player Controls
| Game Boy Button | PC Keyboard |
| D-Pad | Arrow Keys |
| A | J |
| B | K |
| Start | Enter |
| Select | Shift |
Used assets:
None. Everything was created by myself within the 3 month period.
Used programs:
GB Studio, Aseprite, Tiled, FX Hammer
Used plugins:
Platformer Plus by hauntology, Advanced Dialog by pau-tomas
Future Features (?)
The game certainly isn't finished yet. Here's a list of things I might add in the future if people like the game.
More different monster encounters in M.O.N.S.T.E.R.doneMore racing tracks in Monster Truck TourdoneObstacles in Hell Escapedone- More story. If you feel like the arcade is a little bit empty after the story introduction, that's because quite a lot of the story is still missing.
- Endless Mode. Did not manage to get this one done in time. Essentially it throws you into a random segment of one of a random games. And once you have cleared it, it throws you straight into the next one.
A lockout screen for DMG users (Sorry, Tronimal, I didn't manage to get this done in time)doneMore polish on everything, especially Nessi.mostly done- Potentially a second room with even more games.
A personal note:
This GB Compo has been a pretty wild ride for me. I thought that there was one more day to finish the game. Luckily I checked again - 4 hours before the submission was due. Well, it's been quite the stressful evening. But at least I managed to submit the game within the last minutes, albeit with less content than planned and a couple of bugs that I have fixed in the after-jam versions.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Post-Jam Updates to Ghost of the ArcadeSep 24, 2023
Comments
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Pretty incredible for a minigame collection!
Even the ghost wanted someone to play with!
Really enjoyed the game so I did a run of it. Thanks for making a fun little game!
You speedran the game?! 🤯
It's crazy how fast you managed to play through everything.
There is just one thing that could have saved you A LOT of time: The intro dialogue is skippable. You can press start as soon as you can walk in the arcade before interacting with the bullies. That would have shaved off more than a minute off your time.
Oh, that's very helpful, haha. I'll have to do another run then with that time save, thanks.
If you do, please make sure post an update. I'm curious to see how much faster you could possibly go 😅
Sure, I just did one more run for that time save, so just about the same besides that
I'm still really impressed by your speed and precision in all of the games. This record will be difficult if not impossible to beat.
Absolutely loved this game! Graphics, story and gameplay are 5 stars. The only thing a little upsetting is once I turned back into a human, there was no save state made. So when I went back into story mode and hit continue, it took me back to where my last game save was. I wanted to continue playing the games and collecting all the little tokens. Thanks again for the great work. What an incredible game.
This game is so well-made and polished, also the monster boy is so cute! I would kick that bully's asses so bad for being so mean.
Thank you so much 🥰
I want to add more story elements to give the bully characters more depth in the future. After playing an arcade game the characters present in the arcade would change with different dialogue depending on the player's progress.
Hey any plans to export as a .pocket?
Thanks
Hi, I don’t have an Analogue Pocket myself. So I did not have any way of testing whether a .pocket file would work properly. That’s why I had not uploaded a .pocket file yet. But I have created one for you. So if you test it, please let me know if everything runs properly :)
Apologies only seeing this reply now. I didn't get any notifications of your message.
Appreciated I'll check it out on the Analogue Pocket and let you know how it goes
how does the road work in the monster truck segments? is it one big sprite or did you use tile swapping?
The road is just a single big sprite and the turns are its walking animation :)
What about scrolling ground animation? It's just awesome that you did in in GB Studio.
Thanks ^^
That was quite simple though. It's only palette swaps.
What a clever idea, omg!! So smart :)
🙏😊 Thank you
The funniest part was that nobody actually cared he died, they were just like, "Oh crap, now we're in trouble," or "Luckily he didn't bleed over my new carpet..."
Yep, makes you question who is the real monster.
That is true.
Wow, that's so cool! 🤩
I'm thinking about adding some more games in the future. I don't feel like it would already be worth a physical release yet. But I am very happy to hear you liked the game 😊
Thanks a lot for the amazing photos 😍
Plz just don't die in there like the Monster Boy!
That's a lot of game. Amazing you got so many games into one. Very charming characters and the arcade looks great
Thank you so much 🙏
Yeah, I could not decide on which idea to work on. So, I thought, I'd make arcade versions of each idea and put them into one game. But I did not manage to get all ideas done in time for the game jam submission. Thus, I might add more games in the future 🙂
Very nice game you made! How long did it take you? The graphics are really nice and I am surprised to see GB Studio pushed outside of its confort zone :)
These highscores are tough to beat thought! :D How do you get up to 666 in the platformer? ^^
My only "complain" would be how the rocks in the space game tend to damage you even when they are far away, so it often get quite messy if you happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Otherwise congrats, cause there are a lot of well-executed ideas and I'd love to see them more polished! :)
Thanks a lot for the comment and the compliments 😊
It took me something like 2-3 weeks of fulltime work (but stretched over 2.5 months) to get the game to the current state.
At first I wanted to have all highscore somewhere around 1.000. But I got the feedback that it would be way too hard. While testing, I have played each of the games so much that reaching 1.000 points in each game is pretty easy to me now. But that obviously takes practice.
The problem with the space rocks is that adjusting their hit box while they get closer would require an additional plugin, which would impact the performance. As long as the player stays away from the center of the screen, false hits should not really be much of a problem. So I decided against it. But I might try and find other ways to fix that in the future 🙂
Every minigame is easy to pick up and fun to play. If it was released in the GameBoy era, I can see that it's a good minigame compilation to kill time. Good job.
Thank you so much 🙏
Happy to hear you enjoyed your time at the arcade 😊
Best so far. Great execution. Gameplay is super fun, graphics are beautiful. I had a crash and lost all progress - it's possible that's emulators fault. One thing I did not like is how theme was interpreted, feels like you just added horns on regular dude and call him a monster because Jam required it. But other than that, amazing.
Thanks a lot for your feedback and glad you liked the game 😊
About the jam's theme: I absolutely agree - the horns are a bit arbitrary. First I only wanted to have a ghost haunting the arcade as a monster. But that felt a bit bland to me. I wanted to add more storywise that makes you question who the actual monster is (the monster kid or the bullies), which is intended as a comment on racism. I did not have enough time to flesh out the story as much as I would have liked, though. Apart from that you play as a monster in one way or another in each of the mini games. However, I know i am stretching the definition of the word monster a bit here and there (is a monster truck a monster?).
Regarding the crash: Do you still know what you did before the crash happened? I would like to investigate and fix any possibly remaining bugs.
This is amazing! Can I ask you how did you do the racing game?
Thanks a lot 😊
Sure. I used the platformer engine. Drifting basically is just running and the jumping is deactivated. I used palette swaps to make the floor look like it's moving. The street is just a really large actor. And the palm trees etc. are just projectiles emitted from actors that follow the movement of the streets. The projectiles are animated to grow in size. That's pretty much all there is to it 🙂
Wow thanks a lot for the answer! So the curves are the same "street" actor with in a different animation state? I have always wanted to make a game like F1 race for GB
It's even simpler than that. The curves are the actor's "walking animation" 😄
But this comes with a few limitations: Right now there is only one "driving speed" which is tied to the waits in between palette swaps in an on update script. You could probably adjust them with ifs or switches but that would most likely affect the performance. Also you probably will have trouble putting in other racers, as I was already at the limit of simultaneous sprite tiles per row. But I would love to see you prove me wrong 🙂
I need to study it 😂
I'm looking forward to the result 😊
That game is awesome. Made me kinda sad though
Glad you like the game. And sorry for making you sad 😅
If you need something to lift you up, you might want to play my game "My Friendly Little Island". That one is very light-hearted :)
I'll check it out :)
Wow, this amazing! I'd even call it my personal favorite game in this whole jam! Super polished, stunning art and effects and a very fun story.
Thank you so much! 😊 I can't wait to finally play your card game.
I need people not to sleep on this game because it's REALLY good and you should feel very proud of yourself. The art style is extremely cute, and I love the little touches you added, like the speech bubble tails moving when the speaker changes. The games themselves are fun and cute, though I struggled a bit with some of them (explains why I never saw the patron of the gamers before now lol). I'm super impressed with this entry and how much you managed to cram in during the jam. Congrats!
Wow, thank you so much for your kind words! ☺️
I'm really happy to hear you enjoyed the game. Just a few minutes ago I have released a new updated version of the game, which adds a lot of variety to the arcade games (5 more race tracks for Monster Truck Tour, each with different physics / 2 more enemy types and "space gems" in M.O.N.S.T.E.R. / Angels, which serve as moving obstacles, in Hell Escape). So if you should ever want to revisit the game, I would highly recommend to play the new version (e. g. to complete your Tokipon figure collection). Save files should be compatible 😉
Very nice! Thanks for the hard work! I'll definitely revisit when I have the time.
having fun with this so far! Love the concept :)
Thanks a lot! I'm glad you like it 😊
Very good idea, I like the mini games!
Thanks a lot 🙏