= Info =
"Over the Garden Wall (Ep. 1-3)" is a 2D Pico-8 Zelda-inspired adventure game where you play the titular characters introduced to us by Cartoon Network's gem of a mini-series of the same name, Over the Garden Wall. The story spans the first 3 episodes of the show: "The Old Grist Mill", "Hard Times at the Huskin' Bee", & "Schooltown Follies".
This Pico-8 game was completed after on-and-off efforts over 3 years (first commit was Sept '21). The Pico-8 game uses 96.6% of available tokens and 99.99% of the compressed capacity.
= Controls =
= Features of this game include =
- 7 Stages: Boot, Menu Scene, Main Menu, Controls, Intro Song, Play Map, & Game Over
- A retro GBA-inspired boot sequence
- Full screen intro menu scene from original show image
- Main menu with 4 randomized characters & show-accurate logo
- Controls menu displaying how to play the game
- Randomized frog name on each run
- Intro singing frog sequence and full song
- Story for first 3 episodes (Mill, Pottsfield, & Schoolhouse)
- More than 50+ story beats
- 130+ lines of dialog
- 21 distinct characters, with map and dialog sprites
- 3 hidden rock facts to find
- 7 hidden Edelwoods to find
- 6 useable items
- Achievement system w/ 7 achievements
- Game Over screen with score total based on time spent and achievement counts
- NPC behaviors like chasing candy/player, walking in loop, going to new position
- 13 distinct maps, 7 exterior, 6 interior, and 5 distinct buildings
- 1 secret room!
- Fog-of-war type darkness with partial visibility & tile discovery system
- Lurking eyes in the darkness
Party members & active party swap mechanics - Map-locking trigger system which hints to player how to progress (e.g. “leave a candy”)
- Sprite world element randomization - e.g. specific tree textures are random each run
- Play map UI for active character, item, map title
- Player selection system with item descriptor texts and NPC idle texts
= Screenshots =
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I am softlocked?
Seems the other characters can go through walls while following...
Sorry about that! I think that might be the only spot in the game where this is possible IIRC. I’ll fix it by removing a bush or 2 from that area. And yeah, the NPCs don’t have true pathfinding. They just walk in a straight line wherever they go.
Curious to know if anyone found the secret room yet! Happy fall 🍂
I just finished playing the first episode. I am familiar with the show and I can notice the effort you have put in the first episode alone, @PepperoniJabroni. The amount of work you put into this is pretty impressive.
I think it would be fitting to give Wirt's profile photo a more worried expression.
The audio lags after thoroughly looking through an area that uses "fog-of-war type darkness". The lag disappears once I enter a new area.
"Into the Unkown" continues playing after I spam through all the lyrics (like the monster I am).
I bet this could be developed even further! Maybe someone on the Pico-8 Discord can help you manage the token count? :)
Thanks for the comment! I agree about Wirt, maybe I could revisit the sprite. And thanks for the bug report - I will take a look when I can (and the music repeating is intentional).
Its the compression limit that's killing me - the intro image (which is stored as a string), all the dialog, configs, and game event sequences take up lots of string text.
The non-minified public source is available here:
https://github.com/Pepperoni-Jabroni/OverTheGardenWallPico8/tree/main
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