A short story-based game.

Aurora Railway v2

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Aurora Railway v2

by Jusiv

Cart #aurora_railway_v2-0 | 2019-07-21 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License

15

I made this over winter break (December 2018 - January 2019) for WPI's Chill Jam. It's mostly dialogue but there are some gameplay bits throughout.

The jam theme was "chill," which inspired the setting and failstate-free gameplay and also plays into one other detail.

Controls:

• Z/X/C: Advance Text and Interact
• Arrows: Move

You can also get this game from itch.io!

And if you want to follow my work, check out my Twitter: @Jusiv_!

- - - CHANGELOG - - -
v1.0 - Initial Release (9/01/2019)
v2.0 - Revision (7/21/2017)

• Fixed an exploit with Scene Sledding
• Tweaked Scene Sledding timing and internal requirements
• The game is now slightly less silent! (in certain places)

Sweet. Predictable, but nice.

love the story

That's a real sweet story you set up there. My only complaint is that the rocks and slopes in the game part of this lack a bit of depth in their texturing, making a bit tricky to know where to move. Also, sometimes the slopes take too long to appear, thus breaking your combo.

Aw, thanks so much folks!

@Trianull Admittedly, the scene sledding minigame was made under a bit of time pressure towards the very end of the jam so I didn't devote as much time to polishing it as it probably could have used. The collision is based off the bottom of the sprites, which I tried to indicate with the way I handled outlining and with the player's shadow when they jump, but I guess it didn't work well enough.
That said, the issue with slopes sometimes spawning too infrequently was one I didn't prioritize correcting because that just sometimes happens when you're doing a little mind game like that. If the game was actually completely built around the minigame then yeah, I agree that's something that should be addressed, but for this I was more concerned with capturing the story and making the minigame function like an actual mental idle game, with no real consequences and allowing occasional unpredictability like that.
If I do revisit this I may modify how shadows work to make the collision more clear.

I'm new to pico-8 and this is the first game I completed. When it was over was really wishing there was more to go. Hope to see a sequel of this with maybe a small variety of minigames instead of just the scene sledding one

Aurora Railway Version 2 is out!

Here's what changed:

• Fixed an exploit with Scene Sledding
• Tweaked Scene Sledding timing and internal requirements
• The game is now slightly less silent! (in certain places)

Aurora Railway is also now playable directly on its itch.io page!

This game really hit a personal spot for me. Had recently lost my own Grandfather and while we never shared much in common I loved the guy and really miss him. coming across this cart soon afterwards, couldn't have been more perfectly on point for how I've felt myself.
thank you for this short and heartfelt experience.

@Joey-D You're welcome, and I'm so glad to hear it hit home! It probably doesn't come as a surprise that this game was very much a reaction to and encapsulation of thoughts I had after my own grandfather passed.