Chronos Time Warp

co-authored: @stephenwhoskins
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.38
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.36
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.57
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.75
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.52
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.19
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.31
Explore a vast dungeon with The Sultan and try to break yourself free from Chronos's infinite time warp!

MacOS Users: Extract the game from the DMG file and double-click the extracted file to play the game.

Comments37

Cameron Dunlap
Cameron Dunlap6 Oct 2020, 05:48
Not too interesting take on the theme, but you did make a nice zelda-like dungeon crawler. It's a bit short, but there's a lot of great ideas at play here and I wish there was more of a combination of traps in some of the later rooms.
stephenwhoskins7 Oct 2020, 01:17
Thanks @cameron-dunlap! We greatly appreciate the feedback! We wanted to get some more déjà vu elements integrated into the game, but that got lopped off as a result of the time constraints. But we're glad that you wanted to see more content! Making this game was a ton of fun. =)
Aless7 Oct 2020, 02:24
Good ideas on such a tiny game. There's a bit of lack of difficulty progression but was fun to play for a while
SophieMae0
SophieMae07 Oct 2020, 02:25
I love the theme and the graphics, it has very classic dungeon crawler vibes. I feel like the hit box for the main character may have been too big because I kept losing hearts when I felt I was not touching any enemies.
riroriro7 Oct 2020, 02:29
Oh my goodness! This is one of the best Zelda-likes I have played in a game jam! I sincerely hope you are working on a larger game using this as a template - I would love to play it. Great job sticking to the theme, I really enjoyed playing through this.
Firebelley
Firebelley7 Oct 2020, 02:30
I enjoyed the time I spent playing this! I think the controls were a little sluggish, I would have enjoyed faster player speed.
PopDaddyGames
PopDaddyGames7 Oct 2020, 02:51
Excellent work for such a small game- did a good job forcing the player back and using the loop mechanic of- ya died, time to start over!

I love credits, and showing your 'actors'.
stephenwhoskins7 Oct 2020, 02:52
@aless I'm glad it wasn't too hard. In our last submission people thought our game was extremely difficult. Hopefully we didn't go too far in the opposite direction this time, lol. =P

Many thanks for playing! We greatly appreciate it!
stephenwhoskins7 Oct 2020, 02:54
@sophiemae0 Thank you sooo much! I worked hard on that art, lol. =)

Sorry that the hit box wasn't perfectly aligned!
stephenwhoskins7 Oct 2020, 02:56
Thank you sooo much @riroriro!! That positive feedback seriously means so much to us, heh. We obsessed much while we were working on this. =)
stephenwhoskins7 Oct 2020, 03:02
Thank you for the feedback @firebelley! I admittedly was debating with myself whether I had made the attack too slow or not. I actually wound up liking it because I wanted there to be some kind of feeling of tension -i.e., I wanted the operators to feel like they weren't going to be able to attack again in time before a bad guy hits them. I was also thinking it would be really neat if a charm could be equipped to increase attack speed. O__O
VPhyre
VPhyre7 Oct 2020, 03:47
Good game. I really liked it, because it looks like Zelda. Congratulations, and beautiful work.
Annie Owl
Annie Owl7 Oct 2020, 20:02
Neat little game :slight_smile: I loved the simplistic and cute character designs and overall retro fill of this game! I only wish the character had more moves or some sort of special ability.
Itskdog
Itskdog7 Oct 2020, 22:12
Nice job with your game. I created a similar zelda-style dungeon game. I tried to use NES colors and limited sprites to only 4 colors. I only allowed for 4 directions as well. You have to pick the correct door or you loop back to the same room.
Unfocused Locust Games
Unfocused Locust Games7 Oct 2020, 22:29
Fun Zelda-type dungeon crawler! The game was a bit too tough for me to beat, but from what I played, I liked the graphics and the audio! (And the SMB2-inspired snake sprite!)
Pink shard games
Pink shard games7 Oct 2020, 22:33
This game was really fun to play! I loved the idea of being stuck in a time loop of death and the sprites were really cute. This could even be turned into a dungeon style game with random rooms and such to make the game longer. The possibilities are endless.
fabula_rasa7 Oct 2020, 22:53
Short and sweet dungeon crawler. Nothing revolutionary but you don't need to be revolutionary to be fun! And I had fun with this game. I liked the graphics and the chosen color scheme. Music was alright but became quite repetitive after a while.

Theme was not really strong, felt rather tacked on a bit. really nice job on the game besides. Congrats!
stephenwhoskins8 Oct 2020, 21:43
Many thanks @itskdog ! That's awesome that you did that! Did you ever try programming for an actual 8-bit Nintendo before?
stephenwhoskins8 Oct 2020, 21:44
Many thanks @unfocused-locust-games ! And thank you for recognizing my call out to SMB 2! I really love that game even though many people tell me "it's weird." And I know I know "Doki Doki Panic," yada yada. But I still think it's a great game! =)
stephenwhoskins8 Oct 2020, 21:47
Thank you so much @pink-shard-games ! We really wanted to do random rooms believe it or not, and we wanted to make more than one level. We tried to cram as much as we could, heh. Thanks again!
stephenwhoskins8 Oct 2020, 21:48
Thanks @fabula-rasa ! We had additional déjà vu elements planned for this one, but the time ran out on the clock. =)
aCuriosity9 Oct 2020, 02:02
I have freed myself from the time loop of Chronos, and had fun doing it. I wish I could have done it on my controller, the nostalgia of the gameplay made me want that controller.
Everything worked well, was predictable, and it never really felt too unfair.

A few gripes... On the death strike of an enemy, I feel like that should be the most rewarding strike, but the feedback of the final strike was much less than a regular strike. If the death strike inflicted the same bounce back as the other strikes I think it would feel much better to get that kill strike. I didn't like that I could consume the heart pickups when already full. And sometime when I was fleeing, mainly if I tried to flee vertically, the collision colliders for the enemy felt big, as they would hit me from below where I anticipated no collision.

The arrow sequences made for a tense moment.
Good Game. Good Job.
Monkosum
Monkosum9 Oct 2020, 13:15
This game doesn't have a lot of depth to it, but you nailed that retro vibe. Full 8-bit music, simple, but effective pixelart, credits, that show the name of every enemy. The lack of depth is my only issue. If you want to continue working on this game, consider adding an extra item slot, maybe more complex dungeons.
Eugenik
Eugenik9 Oct 2020, 17:25
Just amazing :)
stephenwhoskins9 Oct 2020, 19:23
Congratulations @acuriosity ! Many thanks for playing it all the way through to the end. We really appreciate that you did that.

I agree with your feedback. If we made the boss, "Queenie," more bouncy for instance I think that would be more satisfying. I didn't consider preventing the player from picking up hearts at full health. That would be useful in our case because our game allows you to go back and pick up items that were dropped later if you need them. So thanks for that suggestion! We can also adjust the collision box being used for the feet. Maybe we should make a beefed up version of this game that goes beyond what we were able to put together for this Ludum Dare.
stephenwhoskins9 Oct 2020, 19:27
@monkosum We hear you. Believe it or not we originally intended to have the dungeons randomly generated. (That's probably not too hard to imagine actually, heh.) We also wanted more déjà vu elements and NPC dialogue. All of these things are easy for us to do, but time constraints, yada yada. Oh, and if you check out source repository, you'll even see that the original art committed had an extra item slot, heh. =)
LazyAlarm
LazyAlarm10 Oct 2020, 06:13
Simple, functional and cute! Music was tad too loud compared to the sound effects but besides that, it was good!
Copito10 Oct 2020, 10:09
while the individual parts of this game were simple there were quite a lot of them and they all integrated well. Over all an enjoyable polished feeling experience. Only slight negative for me was the snakes chased me between 2 rooms at once point which felt a bit inconsistent for the genre
Toccio94
Toccio9412 Oct 2020, 16:08
The music fits the game and is cool, maybe a bit too loud, and I also liked the sounds, they had some sort of reverb that make them merge with the music pretty well!

Combat could be improved a bit, but for this game I think is good enough.
When I died and saw I had to do it all again I was a bit disappointed to be honest =/
I know it is part of your game story, but if at least the door was still opened it would have helped. I think this kind of game where you have to do it all again works better when you don't have to do it all again 100% but can skip some part thanks to the knowledge of the previous run.

The connection with the theme is there but may be a little more, the fact that chronos makes you start it again it's more of a setting to make it fit the game. Maybe I liked more the connection with the map that is itself a loop, and you are stuck in it.

Not kidding, and not to underestimate the rest of the game, but the credits were my best part of the game lol I liked that you present the enemies, it reminded me super mario world or something like that.
And give the sultan some clothes! ahah

That said, the game is polished enough, it's a complete experience, and I had no trouble with it (but a heart spawning on the wall
Sunblast
Sunblast14 Oct 2020, 14:51
I really liked your game! Felt very retro, just like when I used to play the old Zelda games.
Huntrox
Huntrox17 Oct 2020, 10:31
very simple dungeon crawler game short and enjoyable goodjob
Malai
Malai25 Oct 2020, 15:05
Was the dungeon map also being a loop intentional? :D

Other games by @zliebowitz

Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord