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Cart #peral-1 | 2021-06-01 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
127

Explore the underwater caverns. Get rich and spend on your vessel to go deeper.

What's Peral

  • One upgradeable submarine
  • Two hours of cave diving
  • 12 different enemies to fight
  • Many paths and hidden treasures

Peral is using the awesome music composed by Gruber.

Post your thoughts, please! And don't forget to back off occasionally, it makes a difference in dogfights.

Technical notes

This is my first finished game, and also an excercise to fit more interesting content in a cartridge than would seem possible at a glance. The menu sits on a separate cart alone and just passes the language pack on: theres no switching once the game starts.

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2

that was excellent ! really well made


2

is that your first pico8 published pico8 game?
this is excellent work, impressive polish!

main gripe is submarine control - not a big fan (though not sure what would be a better scheme...)


3

awesome controls, you really fell the weight of the submarine, well done!


this was really fun!


Taht is a great Game! :D I like it


1

Woah. Beautiful, extensive, fun! 15/10


so many good things in one place!


It's great.

Hyvää työtä.


This game is insanely polished, a great example of what is possible with pico8. Can’t believe you even have multiple languages


That awesome game! Is very big map!


1

Mechanics remind me greatly to Scuba Dive

Really good work, but I kind of agree... the controls for the sub are hard to get used to and don't kind of align to what a sub will move like.


2

Thanks for the feedback! I haven't come across a similar control scheme, and feared that this was for a reason. The ZX Scuba Dive for example looks agonizingly punishing.

However, I really didn't feel anything could be dropped to make room for, say, a dedicated acceleration button: Pico's square screen really calls for aimed non-horizontal shots, and reversing is needed when fighting enemies. I'm eager to try other schemes if you guys come up with any ideas. Even the original 1800's submarine had two vertical screws for depth control. Though it probably had more controls than two buttons and a d-pad. :)

@freds72: This was my first finished game ever, on any platform. I've been programming since I was twelve, mostly C++, but feature creep is my nemesis. Turns out Pico's imposed limits counter that perfectly.


The presentation is top-tier, but like others, I am struggling with the control scheme. I would prefer a simple d-pad direction == submarine direction approach, but I'm not sure how it would fit into your game.


1

This is incredible! There's an insane level of polish and creativity, and it's so fun to get lost in the world because it's so well designed. The art and music are beautiful. I can't believe you managed to cram so much content onto a pico8 cart!

Also I don't really don't mind the control scheme as much as everyone else seems to. In fact, I think it's really interesting and fun to get used to -- you have to think ahead a bit and move deliberately since you don't have full control. If there's one criticism I have (and it's more of a preference really) I feel like the fully upgraded anti-missile system was too OP. It made a lot of the smaller enemies pretty much unable to hurt you, and thus removed some of the tension from inching through the low-vision areas. I might try replaying it without getting that upgrade to test my skills :) Also, this is your first game? What?! You're incredibly talented!


1

This game is amazing. The movement takes some getting used to, but it works well after you do.

One likely issue—I don't think the final treasure chests get counted correctly in your total. The first two times I played it, I got 30/37 even after thorough searching, and there are 7 chests at the ending. I don't think I overlooked some other collection of 7 chests...


1

@hahhah42: Ouch, I should've seen that coming. The final chests are not supposed to count: I wanted the player to be able to check if they've found everything after the final boss. So you really missed exactly the same number of chests as there's at the end, and I can see how that can be frustrating. :D

I don't think I can squeeze in a separate "ending chest" gfx-wise, but maybe I can just end the game with a single palette-swapped golden chest. Or just make the final chests count; there would be a total of 44 chests then. I'll look into it, thanks!


@Phvli Oh, so I did just miss 7 chests both times? Well, that's good to know. Wonder where they were hiding...


Hidden chests (not exact locations, but hints):

Thin brick walls in the castle zones can be demolished. The chests behind them can be seen if you don't turn around too soon.

There's three fans in the western caves, each guarding something.

Right before going east on the surface, dive down and look for a cave blocked by rubble.

The water level also rises in the starting area.

The abyssal zone has three side caves that can easily be missed.


2

@Phvli Huh, now I've got them all, but only one of your hints was news to me, and it accounted for just 2 of the missing chests. In truth, my sense of direction is rather poor, so I get lost easily in games like this. Must've just missed different random areas in the previous playthroughs without realizing it.


Yay, that's great! Congrats! :)


Sorry for being totally thick - but how I am supposed to pass huge blowing fans? I have a better engine (and most of the upgrades) and still cannot run through current...
Missing a switch???


Sort of a Submetroidvania. This was great fun and I wouldn't really change anything - Thank you!


@freds72 Not a switch, no. Have you tried blowing things up? (Not referring to the fans.)


I did blow up a couple of walls - I might simply miss one part of the map, will search more.
thanks


This game is great. Well done. I didn't get all the chests, but I did get all the fun!


This game has been added to speedrun.com, for anyone interested in submitting their times. I've kicked off the leaderboard:
https://www.speedrun.com/peral


Hola, perdon por hablar español, pero el subtitulo del juego esta en español, no se supone que deberia estar en ingles tambien?


Really impressed how much gameplay you crammed into a PICO-8 cart here.

I didn't mind the controls. They do take some getting used to, but sometimes that's satisfying. Still, if you wanted a different option in the future, using relative controls--left/right to turn, up/down to move forward/back relative to facing direction--could work for a game like this.


Unintuitive controls IMHO: better left-right for clockwise/anti-cw and up/down for speed up/slow down....


Oh my gosh I have the exact same stuffed fox!


A game in finnish? That's just awesome!
Erittäin hyvä peli!


I love this game


Fantastic game. I thought the controls were fine, but I might have gone even further with a relative scheme (left/right to rotate, up/down to go forward/back).


Wow! This game has instantly become one of my favorites! Awesome, man!


good game



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