BLOOD OF VLADULA JR. is a 2D platformer inspired by the platformers on the Nintendo Game Boy system. Jump, run, bonk monsters on the head, and turn into a bat, through 8 different levels, including a final boss stage. Help Count Vladula jr. regain the respect of the monster community and defeat his arch-nemesis.
TRAILER
CONTROLS
ARROW KEYS - Move
Z - Jump/(mid-air)Bat form
X - Lift/Throw
P - Pause menu
Note: You can switch Z and X in the Pause menu.
HOW TO PLAY
THANKS TO
My partner, Alexandra, for testing and feedback. Also everybody who's out there providing resources to others. Making tutorials, helping out in forums, etc.
The code for this game was minified using Shrinko-8
You can download a pdf instruction booklet with hand drawn images of characters and monsters, and hopefully soon a readable version of the code for free at https://slumma.itch.io/blood-of-vladula-jr
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This plays soooo great! The art and the palette are just masterful,great job!the learning curve is steep,but i am committed to beating it eventually
That was fun to complete, but I don't think I'll be getting all the stars.
(My star count: 5+5+0+2+3+1+1+5 = 22. Do you have enough tokens to display the total somewhere.)
Do you have to press the up arrow at the moment of climbing a chain? Several times I was holding down the up arrow near a chain and fell past it.
It would also be nice if holding town the Z key after jumping means you turn into a bat at the apex of the jump, but you might think that makes it too easy.
It amuses me how similar the palette is to the platformer Air Delivery, while having a completely different tone and gameplay feel.
@Cowirrie Thanks for playing! Great idea about displaying total stars. I think I can probably squeeze out a few more tokens somewhere.
I'm testing now and holding UP when you approach the chain seems to work however if you climb a chain and then jump off the chain, then you have to let go of UP to be able to climb again.
Regarding turning into a bat at the apex of the jump, it's not so much about what's easier, but more about the player having as much control of their movement as possible. And it would make it much harder to react for example if you want to fly under a spider before a ghost gets you.
I actually took the palette from Feline Frenzy. I really fell in love with that game's visuals when I saw it.
good atmosphere and I like the fat sprites!
(checkpoints could be better placed - 2nd level is getting large and you cannot "refresh" a checkpoint after getting more stars, tbh stopped playing at this level after 10 retries)
The fourth level is super hard. Not got to the end of it yet, but it does have that “one more go” quality even after I’ve given up in frustration. I think more checkpoints are needed on the longer levels.
Ha! I played on from where I was stuck in level 4 intending to take a screenshot, and ended up getting to the end of the level :-)
But until that, I found that the lifts just after the first checkpoint were pretty tricky, and the part afterwards with ghosts, spiders and some collapsing platforms also very hard to get through. So a checkpoint betweent the two would be good.
I was thinking… if you have space and tokens, maybe there could be different difficulty levels that control how many checkpoints there are.
It was so bad that when I got to the part where I met the witch, I lost and had to start all over again.
2 player games
wow! just cleared the game, and that was so challenging. tough but fair, and it was worth it to win all of the stars, too. i had to blow a fan at my hands because i was beginning to sweat. such a cute story, and i'm glad i played it during october spooky season lol
This is very good, as far as I can get in it. I am very bad at playing it.
Great game however for some reason loading from checkpoint on the furst stage shows a bug . It loads but nothing is working .The game is basically stuck . I have to delete save data to make it work again .
@NoamAS are you playing on Miyoo Mini? It's a common bug on that device. I've tried to fix it but I haven't figured out a solution yet
Played this on a flight. Enjoyed it! Difficulty and controls were at times a bit on the unfair side but honestly occupied an hour of my time. Time not wasted :). Liked the graphics and the music!
honestly new to the pico 8 scene but found this platformer to be super solid and I found from one your other works with the fire fighters
Spooky season game!
I just played through this and while I throughly enjoy it, especially with the polished levels and difficulty ramping, it feels really nice...so it feels terrible to show places I felt the polish was missing...
1.) For so few stages, recording run times through stages would definitely keep this up on the shelf for more than just 'another playthrough' but instead would be something that encourages you to really feel out the stages. I mean, I arleady found some SMB style skips myself...
2.) As an older player, and I know kids go, "this doesn't make any sense", but I disagree, but having a lives system and then restarting from scratch instead of checkpoints. I know I definitely would not have just sailed through this in the 40 minutes of smashing my arcade stick around like a moron if it had a proper 3 lives, 3 continues system.
Again, I know that's controversial, but the idea is those limits provide a proficiency exam of skill..i..e those limits are the game's 'skill check' not just the moment to moment 'can do do THIS STUNT!?' I think with slightly less punishing 'normal play' and leaving the highest skilled parts being acquiring stars, just small things, really, this could be like...along with your manual and box, to me that total package feels like a Game, with a capitol G and a plastic hangtag sticker applied to it's cellophane wrapper.
At any rate, It's nice to play hand made levels like these, despite being so few. Looking forward to a sequel, direct or spiritual, in Pico8. Maybe revenge of that end boss guy. He didn't seem happy I was slinging witches right at his noggin.
Thanks everyone for the kind words!
@hseiken First of all thank you for taking the time to write this comment. It's very valuable when people share their thoughts like this.
1) I definitely would've liked to add run times and a ranking maybe, but I ran out of both tokens and characters.
2) I agree that limited lives and continues can add longevity. It also allows you to add things like points or collectibles that give you extra lives as a risk/reward mechanic. But it can be tricky to keep people engaged if they don't get a sense of progression. Especially on a system like Pico-8 where maybe players expect a short experience and so unless they really connect with the game right away, there needs to be some hook to encourage them to give it one more try (like a high score system) rather than just going for the next thing on Splore. That's at least what I was thinking when designing the game
If it's any consolation, I find the lack of deeper games on Pico8 (i.e. ones that have a start and end but also feel like there's substance there to experience beyond 'okay, that was a fun 20 minutes') fairly depressing. I suspect a lot of earlier games suffer this way due to it being early on, but today with all of these tricks for storage into a single cart (and multiple carts if you are like me and don't really want to show off coding skills because the player doesn't see them) I would have expected a lot more games of this type to appear.
There's a couple of them out there and they're fun, this is one of them.
I look forward to future projects (maybe a sequel with a new ability to turn into ??? to ???)
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