Neat idea, but got a bit tedious for me.

Like the idea and the artwork is really nice. Game was decently fun but a bit basic.

@rhornbek is it something that can be fixed? (like, it was too easy to dodge, or too hard so it became impossible to win, etc?) I ask because there's a "one game per month" jam that will use the same theme for this month, and I may reuse this game for it..

@wendel-scardua if the circle were smaller and had the player react quicker than it could be more fun, currently you can look ahead and be able to avoid obstacles pretty easily. Also, the fact that the main penalty is having to play longer until you win seems a little counter-intuitive, and with the slow-paced music it can wear on the player pretty quickly.

I really liked the atari feel though, if you cultivate the gameplay more it could be a great game!

@zashers I tried to make the difficulty self-balancing: as the end of the game approaches, both the player and the music get faster (so the slow music is kind of a penalty itself), which would increase the risk of collision. Unfortunately the way I coded the change of speed I could only slow it by a factor of 2, so at the slowest it is much slower than I wanted it to be.

About the counter-intuitive goal: at first I thought to make the game a normal "infinity runner" where the goal is to survive the longest, but with the theme being "stuck in a loop" I thought a more appropriate goal would be to escape from being stuck there as soon as possible.

(Maybe I'll re-reverse the goal before submitting to the other - monthlong - jam I'm participating)

Thanks for your comments :)

Vi seu jogo no Jamtastic :D

I really liked the game being a NES rom, it was very fitting and well done. The gameplay was a little repetitive, and I felt that the more I hit things, the harder it was to win, like a snowball effect. But the art and soundtrack were very cute and well made. Good job!

The fact that this was written in assembly is might impressive. Honestly, really good job! The game seriously feels like it could have been published on the original NES.

at first i thought some of the things like the clocks would be powerups, until i understood everything is increasing the time, then i realized that time increase is actually a negative effect for winning the game

@stefan-b sorry for not making it more clear in-game (in my defense I did wrote all that in the description :) ), thanks for playing it!

Totally true, ... might just be an idea for extensions to also have some positive powerups

very simple mechanics! and nice style! i loved this game!

I liked your game my congratulations, I also did one if you want to know, and give me your feedback I am very grateful, this is the link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/resurrection

Fun game, I *nearly* won about four or five times and I found it frustrating, but in a good way. One downside would be that due to what is (i presume to be) the random spawning of items, you can end up with a situation in which it is impossible to avoid something no matter how good the player might be. Still fun though I think

Nice little game ! Congrats

I enjoyed this game. The mechanics took a while to work out, and the difficulty seems a little hard for a jam game. This is closer to the escape when time gets faster. Before the acceleration, the challenge is maybe on the low side. Despite the fact that the difficulty could be tweaked, I really like the idea for the game, and the music that ramps in tempo with the worm's speed is a great touch that enhances the feeling of urgency and risk. I eventually managed to escape, showing that the game is engaging despite feeling very difficult when time speeds up at the end.

Took me a while to figure out the objective (should have read the description :P) and it's a bit too hard, but the concept is great and very fitting :D

Really cool little game. I love the retro feel! The art and music fits this game very well.

The game had a nice difficulty curve created by the increase in speed as you came close to completing the level.

In my opinion the speed difference was maybe a bit to big. This made it feel like a large setback, when you hit something just before escaping.

After playing some rounds, the best time I could get was 2:16.

I had a lot of fun playing your game and would be happy if you could try out our game as well!

@minibetrayal I agree, the RNG is a double-edged sword: sometimes it's impossible to survive, sometimes you can run in circles on the same track and win with no effort. I did have plans for some tweaking that would make for a more balanced game, but I almost ran out of time. But I'll try something for the next, post-jam version.

It's a nice compact game bur fully realised. I like how there's a element of risk management in which penalties you choose to take. Good job, you really do feel 'stuck in a loop'.

Pretty cool for a weekend project! Loved the music.

This was a nice game, but at first I did not know the objective. Maybe you could add a tutorial at the beginning? Overall great job :)

The concept is awesome ! I dev with my friend on SNES in asm. I respect that !

@sophiemae0 I'd love to put a tutorial. Unfortunately I ran out of time, and at least for this game, I had to write most of the text by hand, pixel by pixel. Note to self: I should make some kind of font tool for the NES.

Escaped from the loop!
Nice gameplay and also like the music change when near escaping.

@wendel-scardua I totally understand I always regret not having the time to put tutorials in my game - it's the curse of Ludem Dare :/

@mrbamboo cool! I'm thinking about trying SNES dev in the future as well. I've been learning and making NES games since March, and if I'm not mistaken the compiler I use supports SNES asm as well.

Incredible, Its so cool to see this on an NES emulator. Fascinating! I liked the style a lot. Great work!

This one was tought, had a good time with it but felt like the balancing was a bit on the impossible side of things without the save stats. Thanks for submitting it! - PomoTheDog

I enjoyed it but couldn't escape, not sure how easy it is to win but felt like a bit of a death spiral in that regard (the longer it takes, the harder it is to escape). Still fun for a bit and as a concept. Love the artwork, the audio is good and the concept is unique :)

A lot of good in this game - movement in concentric circles need some getting used to, original graphics, that funny almost-circus-like music that plays like a broken record xD I think there is one core issue with the game though: the fact that the longer you play, the worse your chances of escaping (because the field fills up with time-obstacles) pretty much means that the moment you swallow a clock or a bug, you are better off restarting. Or am I missing the point here?

P.S. The game was too hard for me, I was 10s away from escaping a couple times, but ultimately failed :(

Really nice game. I really liked how the music got faster as you did, that added a lot to the game. Cool graphics style.
One thing I think could have made it better is having the game get harder when the remaining time goes down instead of getting harder the longer you play. If you get a good start though the game is entirely possible.

Nice Job :)

It's so cool to see someone make something in a NES emulator. It's hard for me to find substantive criticism besides the point already made that it's easy to make the game effectively unwinnable as obstacles pile up. The core gameplay is really solid, and RNG dependency isn't so bad for something that plays a round so quickly.

@eldar in a way you're not really wrong. The goal of the game (escaping in the shortest time in a single game session) can be trumped by the metagame, which is simply restarting the game until you run into a more favorable game session. I made the goal like that in order to fit the theme, but I can't really keep the player stuck in the loop if they can simply reset the console :sweat_smile: (or as someone did, simply using the emulator's save/load feature)

Maybe I should've had reversed the goal at the price of not fitting the theme as much as possible; maybe I should try at least making this an option in the post-jam version.

Heya! Thanks for submitting your game to my stream at wwww.twitch.tv/drjavasaurus. I had a great time playing it ! For some reason my earlier comment got lost, but extra kudos for making this in an actual NES setup. Very nice concept, the graphics and audio matched up very nicely. Had a blast and looking forward to learning from this ! Well done !

Hi all right, sorry for the delay here is your official feedback, I love the style of play, and see how it is recreated in very smart ways, I don't know if it happens only to me but I've been playing it for a long time, and the music seems be slow and the enemies don't kill me for anything, then i thought i'm doing something wrong, i opened the game in firefox HTML5 (alternative)
https://nes.scardua.net/#ouroboros, I closed the page and opened it and the problem persists

@etrealjunior there's no problem with the game, you simply skipped the description both here and on itch :) Please read the description, then try again.

kkk I did it, thank you very much !!!!!

Heyo, I played your game on stream! Here's the vod if you wanna rewatch; https://www.twitch.tv/videos/765804766

Thanks for submitting your game!

Dude, this would have been a perfectly fun game if you made it in Unity over a week. The fact that you made it in 6502 assembly for the NES in 72 hours just blows my mind. Awesome job!!

First of all, I really like that you guys had the audacity to make a NES compatible game. I am totally ignorant of the complexity to do so, but I promptly was astonished by this endevour! So congratulations!

I really dig how you address the theme and the gameplay really make me feel stucked. The graphics and audio were made accorndly with the plataform you are making this game, being a great flavour to this game.

I had to major concerns about the gameplay itself:

First - the top and bottom crops in the outer track difficulties the readbility of the game state - also considering that is a reflex game with limited graphics/animations/transitions and found a little frustrating and this deeply weighted in cognitive spawn.

This leads to the Second concern, I was ALMOST winning and catch 3 (or more) bloated clocks and time-bugs togheter... my remaining time came from 10 seconds to 1 minute in a glimpse. I never felt so stucked in a loop! hahahaha I understand the appeal considering the theme and was deeply affected by the feeling, but being a game I think this maybe push people away - because you are stuck in a bad highscore run after a minor mistake or unlucky moves, so you needs to restart the web page to escape the loop? Very poetic and diegetic to the theme, very frustrating as a game.

Overall, I loved the audacity to make a NES game in a JAM, aesthetics and all; and I think this game hit the stop with the theme... but it break my heart when I realized that I was stucked too hahaha Great entry!

> First - the top and bottom crops in the outer track difficulties the readbility of the game state - also considering that is a reflex game with limited graphics/animations/transitions and found a little frustrating and this deeply weighted in cognitive spawn.

Oh, I know what you're talking about, @edugpinheiro ... It's (partially) the emulator's fault: some emulators cut the first and last few rows of pixels of the screen, because some CRT TVs did that as well. I forgot about it because the emulator I was using during development, Mesen, didn't do that.

@edugpinheiro also, there is some complexity sure, but the basics of it can be learned from this online book: https://book.famicom.party (even though it's still unfinished)

Very cool game! :)


Looks and plays great on my Twin Famicom! Cool to see more retro games in Ludum Dare. Very fitting to the theme.

Cool NES game. :)

[This game drove me to madness, as I'm sure you witnessed on stream last night.](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/766889390?t=01h49m03s)

You really nailed the "Nintendo Hard" vibe, for sure. ;) I especially love how this game had such a simple concept, and yet it was a premise that I had never really seen before. The adaptive music was also a super nice touch.

And the fact that you got all of this working on an NES is just absolutely bonkers to me. So cool!

Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767497194?t=10h41m56s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin

Your game was played on my stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on 10/11. Thank you for sharing your game with us! You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://tinyurl.com/yy4oycvv

@ursagames I'm watching the video right now (I missed the stream), thanks for playing it

@samuli I can't believe I forgot to test on my NES, nice to see that it worked fine :)


I think I had a perfect run without getting hit at all :)

At first I was annoyed because I couldn't tell what was good to hit and what was bad but it turned out everything was bad. That could maybe be more clear, but it was pretty easy to see so no problem really. Really impressive to see an NES game as I know development for NES is *not fun*. Thanks for sharing.

> as I know development for NES is *not fun*

@bentglasstube I guess "fun" is relative, because I am having fun learning and making these NES games :)

(you may want to check my other ones at wendelscardua.itch.io)

> At first I was annoyed because I couldn’t tell what was good to hit and what was bad but it turned out everything was bad

Yeah, between the color choices and lack of in-game instructions I'm seeing why people miss that. I tried compensating by putting instructions in the description - and then by highlighting the important parts - but I guess the visuals strongly suggest that some things are good and others are bad.

This is something that I'll have to fix on a postjam version... There's a local one-game-a-month jam reusing the LD theme, and I intend to submit this game there as well.

I enjoyed this Wendel! The main trouble I had was that some of the collectables felt like they could be positive things, but essentially it was a game of avoid everything. The way it loops makes the controls a little bit challenging (in a good way), and the time mechanic felt interesting. I also think its pretty cool you made it as a NES game :)

I had fun playing this game! Maybe you could add a easier level. I wasn't able to finish the game sadly :(

Solid entry.

It's awesome that you made a game for the NES haha! I wasn't able to beat it, though. It got a little tedious to keep dodging for a long time only to get all that time added back because of a small mistake. I got really close, though, only 20 secs remaining, but then eventually I got back to 2m30. I really liked the dynamic music. Great game!

We met in a stream chat a few days ago and I promised to TAS this :D

Welp, here it is!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z1c0j9U88U

Really impressive that this actually works on an actual NES. Absolutely love this.

@initialposition I remember that! I loved the frantic movement, hahaha

@javasaurus hey, that "earlier comment" you said that "got lost"? I just found it by sheer luck - it's on this other game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/loop-stuck

(I was confused for a moment with your comment about "valid NES game" on a game that had nothing to do with it)

Gorgeous game!! Super hard but very fun

@wendel-scardua holy crap, this is why I'm not supposed to write and do ratings after 1 am ! I moved it here :)

Heya! Thanks for submitting your game to my stream at [wwww.twitch.tv/drjavasaurus](twitch.tv/drjavasaurus). This really is a gem and it should receive EXTRA coolness point for being a valid NES game. In terms of gameplay it's whatever you can expect from a NES loop game, really cool you managed to overcome hardware limitations and as I said, the effort you put in it shouldn't go unnoticed. Fun game, great graphics, audio to match it and everything wrapped in a NES package. Lovely, simply great :)

It's a very fun and original idea. Polished and smooth. Congratulations!

Amazing game! It brings authentic NES challenge to it's fullest glory. And kudos for the original NES catridge! Completing the jam game in 6502 assembly is quite an achievement! :)

At first, I felt it is too easy, but the complexity increased, culminating in intense laste seconds which turned in actual minutes of tries and fails. Very engaging - you want to get that timer to 0. Good job!

As for improvements... I understand that it is NES with all the limitations, but maybe it is possible to add some kind of feedback on collision with bugs and items? At first, I considered only bugs to be dangerous and other items to be some kind of power ups, until I've figured what is what... (I know, it is in the description, but who reads it these days?). Maybe some kind of blinking or shake would be suffice to show the negative effect.

It was a fun game, well executed. It seems easy at first, but becomes super tricky quite quickly. At some point it becomes almost hallucinatory. Maybe the psychedelic like choice of colours does that, as well as the time stretching effect. Well done.

Cool game. well thought out and plays nicely. Its cool to see retro-style games in ludumdare. congrats!

Fun little game, kept getting super close then eating everything by accident.