A PICO-8 Mega Man Fangame
Featuring:
- Accurate Mega Man sound and game feel!
- Title, Select, and Stage music by yours truly!
- Four Robot Master stages and one Wily Stage!
- E-Tanks!
- Checkpoints!
Controls:
- Left/Right Arrows - Move
- Up/Down Arrows - Climb Ladders
- Z - Jump, Select Stage, Use E-Tank
- X - Shoot, Select Weapon
- Enter - Pause, Select Weapon
Special Thanks to:
- Flowme, heavily based my Mega Man sprites off of theirs
- donbattery, spritesheet drawing function
- merwok and JadeLombax, both helped me better understand data encoding
- thisismypassword, shrinko-8
Source code and development tools available at https://github.com/TriforceMayhem/Kiloman.
Enjoy!
Awesome condensed Mega action/adventure, if any complain would it be some tight jumps here and there, overall a great game, loved the music.
I wanna like it, but it's not fun dying 40 times cuz I messed up some tight jump in Fish Man's stage where you have to jump right at the edge and now I have to do the rest of the level over again and again and again cuz there's barely any checkpoints except for right before the boss fight. And the constant spikes and pits just get really annoying, especially in Wily where you get to the check point but you died too much and ran out of Fish weapon energy so you might as well reset and do the whole level over again. What's the point? It's not fun to repeat parts I've already done 50 times just so I can do the difficult part that's actually giving me trouble. The earlier parts aren't a challenge anymore, I've already done it more than I'd ever want to, I just want to do this one difficult part. There's clearly been effort put into this game, I feel bad for knocking it, but Fish Man & Wily levels are just not fun, and you'll spend most of your time doing those.
This Rockman fan game has really good music, but there are a lot of flaws. Since the screen itself is small, the difficulty is already high. On top of that, there are many places where you have to jump over large pits, and places where even a small jump makes you hit spikes. You have to stand right on the edge to barely make the jump. I think this is a very boring design. Although it increases the difficulty, it's really boring, and it easily causes players to get stuck. Also, the design doesn't need to be so strict. I suggest changing it so that after taking damage, the invincibility frames prevent spikes from instantly killing you, giving players some room to maneuver. The special weapons are designed too boringly. I suggest referencing the design of Ninjaman's weapon in Mega Man W, which is very well done. I suggest that special weapons should no longer stack damage values, but instead have well-designed and interesting mechanics. Also, boss mechanics could be more complex.
In summary, my suggestions are:
Remove boring designs that only increase difficulty, such as extremely long pits and low spikes.
Design special weapons with interesting mechanics — this one is the most important. You can reference Mega Man W.
Break away from traditional paths and design interesting levels. Interesting levels are more important than difficult levels.
Considering memory limitations, if conditions allow, boss mechanics should be more complex.
Author, if you want to make a good Rockman fan game, don't imitate traditional paths. You should innovate independently and not be bound by frameworks.
@🍭 Wow nice Mega Man W ad.
Look, I'm working with a cartridge a quarter the ROM size of the original Mega Man, with 99.97% of the allotted code space used up even after heavy optimization. If I wanted to innovate, I'd have made the game in GameMaker. The difficulty is in service of the game's length, because if you know what you're doing, Kiloman can be beaten in around 10 minutes. I do agree that it goes a little far in some places though. Fish Man's stage needs to be more forgiving, the Wily stage could do with a rework, and some of the boss weakness numbers could be adjusted to help balance the difficulty for less practiced players.
I'm not the creator of Mega Man W. I just think this fan game is very high quality.
Also, from what can be seen in the game you designed, it's clear that a lot of effort went into it. I think you should make the following improvements:
First, remove those places that require extremely difficult, high-precision operations, such as jumping over pits. For example, in the Merman stage, Mega Man's jumping speed in water is already high, and on top of that, the spikes are quite dense, making him hard to control. What's even harder is a section with increased gravity where you have to jump from a low place to a high place. I couldn't make that jump. But I had already defeated Ice Man and Dagger Man. It's a real shame that I could only quit.
Second, because the character's size and the screen ratio are already large, this increases the game's difficulty. Some suggested changes:
Change it so that during the invincibility frames after the character takes damage, touching spikes won't kill them.
When the character touches spikes, they won't be instantly killed; instead, they'll lose part of their health.
Remove those sections that require high-precision operations, such as jumping over pits.
Lower the difficulty of the flickering/disappearing blocks in Laser Man's stage. Don't mess with the player, otherwise it's very easy to drive players away.
Increase the frequency of save points.
Improve the way E Tanks are used. Otherwise, when players encounter places that require difficult operations, they can easily consume them by mistake. Because of using them by mistake, I painfully lost two E Tanks.
Third, here are some special weapons I designed:
The first is the Nuclear Bomb. After the weapon is activated, beautiful blue nuclear bombs with atomic patterns, like a meteor shower, will fall from the sky. It's a full-screen attack, similar to Astro Man from Mega Man 8. Also, after the full-screen attack, due to nuclear radiation, enemies' health will automatically decrease by one for a period of time. Small enemies with only one health point will disappear directly. The energy cost is 1/4 to 1/3 of total energy.
The second weapon is Bug. Yes, that's right, bug. After activation, it can produce bugs that benefit the player, such as enemies suddenly disappearing, automatic health recovery, or a block appearing in the middle of a pit ahead. The energy cost is 1/5 of total energy.
The third weapon is Deep Dig. This one is also relatively easy to design. Just like Guts Man from the first game, it can directly remove one unit of wall or floor, hold it up with your hands, and then press the attack button to fire it. The dug-out part will become empty. With this mechanic, players can use it to pass through walls, dig tunnels, and so on. It's also a very cost-effective weapon in terms of design.
The fourth weapon is Burning Self. After activation, the whole body catches fire, consuming energy units over time, and entering a super armor state, such as taking reduced damage, not being knocked back when hit, and the body being covered in flames, allowing flame-style attacks to be launched.
Create interesting mechanics within limited space.
Game is quite nice. But playing original Mega Man. This game is even harder, in some aspects, than the original. Like with jumps. Mega Man had some demanding jumps. But here. All or most of the jumps, must be very precise. One slight mistake and you die and you have to replay the entire level again. Screen size adds another difficulty. Especially with enemies, as you can get quite often surprised by them and also trigger their re-spawn, because you backed away. Music and sounds are good.
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