You play as a blue teddy bear (bluebeary...get it?) armed with a red yoyo. As you traverse the open world, you'll learn new ways to traverse the world and ultimately defeat the witch who has turned the animals in this world against you. Yeah, there's not much of a story and its basically Sonic but here we are...
This game is a metroidvania of sorts - you gain new abilities including swinging from the yoyo, wall dash and ground pound by opening chests. These chests also serve as checkpoints. The reason I say "metroidvania of sorts" is because there is a large section where things are probably too linear to call it a true metroidvania. Once all abilities are gained, there are three beads to find (also in chests) before you can access the final boss. These each require solving precision traversal puzzles.
There are also bags of food that can replenish your health throughout the world. Also, down+jump allows you to fall through the brown bridges. I had one person that tested not realize that and got stuck right at the beginning. I guess this old gamer thought that was standard practice among platformer games in general.
I started with NerdyTeachers's tutorials and kind of just kept adding things. Even though so much has been changed, I really want to thank them for giving me a great staring point that was easy to build upon. I also wanted to thank them and this whole PICO-8 community for compiling so much great information which I referenced countless times as a person who doesn't really consider themself a "programmer".
Initially I wanted lots of enemy types but after tweaking the movement, I realized I had fallen in love with the movement more than the enemies. After my computer died and I lost a lot of code and artwork, I re-focused the game around precision traversal puzzles. Right before my computer died, I had added one very complex enemy (the final boss is a witch with lots of animation). Even though I think she is more of a graphical showcase than a properly difficult final boss I really wanted to have her in the game so I re-coded her animations and particles from scratch. I think it would have taken a lot more work (and tokens) to have the final boss centered around the movement like the rest of the game is.
I think this game is difficult on first play-though and you can get lost if you aren't careful. That said, once you know where to go and the traversals puzzles are figured out, I really enjoy playing it and the movement feels very satisfying.
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I am at the token limit (literally 8192/8192). I'm sure there's some places I can trim down but things feel really good to me right now so I'm happy with where things are at. Also, I really didn't want to obfuscate things too much.
There's a few things I'd be interested in improving (sometimes when you catch a flower with your yoyo, the initial angle calculation pushes you to the opposite side of the flower, the final boss breaks if you die then respawn and then walk away from her or if your last chest was real far away and sometimes the spiders that spawn from coconuts can get stuck on slopes...) so I may come back to this project and update in the future. I have some ideas to fix some of these things but fixing them properly will likely only happen if I can free up some tokens.
All of that said, I'm really proud of what is here and hope you enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it.
Update 1:
Lots of QOL changes including:
Grace period for jumping when waling off ledges.
Better indicators of which beads have been gotten.
Now a checkpoint is recorded whenever walking by a chest (even a previously open one).
Better respawn behavior
Instructions showing how to drop through floors has been added
A few minor map changes to help with traversal
Bug fixes:
Enemies no longer have inconsistent HP (fixed bug in enemy respawn setting a different HP than initial HP)
Final boss no longer glitches if you walk away from her.
fixed some slope inconsistency with spiders
A couple of notes for those following along:
I tried to add an outline to help Blue be more visible (especially in front of trees). It just didn't look right to me because the outline was so thick even though it was only one pixel.
A few players have felt that catching a flower with the yoyo felt like it stole their second jump. I certainly understand this sentiment and did some things to fix that. Only problem is that the level was designed around a single jump after catching a flower. The rainbow splash below Blue is the indicator that you just used your last jump.
The spider spawn from coconuts were inconsistent and added too much randomization to things. I patched that it so that spiders spawn from ALL coconuts. Just beware. Most places allow you to jump somewhere to safety you just gotta be on your toes.
Great great game ! Very much enjoy playing ! The graphics are amazing and the animations too.
Tried it for a few minutes and couldn't figure it out, how do you stick to walls or get your yoyo to attach to anything like in the clip?
Hey Cactuar,
You have to run around the map to find upgrades which allow you to access new parts of the map. Find the chests to get the upgrades. (note, the first one allows you to swing from the golden flowers)
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