Doomsday Care by Kyrio

[raw]
made by Kyrio for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

Miniature.gif

Doomsday Care is virtual ~~pet~~ monster game for the Game Boy Advance, made entirely in three days. It's Tamagotchi with monsters in lieu of eggs!

Play as a necromancer hell-bent on destroying civilization, hoping to conjure the most bloodcurdling horror from the underworld to achieve your goal. When the spell turns out to only manifest juvenile monsters, it's up to you to take care of the youngling and make it into the murderous titan of your dreams.

The HTML5 build is the post-jam version where we added missing animations as well as a visible timer, with evolution taking 120 seconds instead of 200. These animations were all made during the jam but we couldn't integrate them in time. You can find the jam and post-jam versions in the downloads.

How to play - You can play the game from your browser on the Itch page. We designed it to be played in the background while you do other things, which the HTML5 emulator doesn't really let you do, so it's a good idea to download the ROM and play it on a modern emulator such as mGBA. The latest version of the game is much quicker to finish though, so it's less of an issue now! - On your browser, use the arrow keys to move, X to confirm and Z/W (whatever is left to your X) to cancel. On the GBA, use the A and B buttons as usual.

Rules - Try to keep your creature's Bloodlust, Wrath and Swagger above zero! They will go down over time – the longer your bar, the faster it goes down. A stat of zero means death! - To raise your stats, use the :anger:Actions at your disposal! They may have side effects on monsters, so keep an eye on how they affect your stats. - After some time, your monster will evolve to the next stage of revolting-ness - look at the timer! The most filled bar will determine which form you will get next, and how your bars grow. The timer above tells you when your creature will evolve. - The creature will evolve a few times before being ready for total destruction, so stick to the end!

If you happen to have a GBA flashcart to play it, that's even better. Only one of us did, so testing was difficult ;)

This has been quite a challenge as none of us have ever made a GBA game before and it's a far cry from modern game development. We had our hands full with visuals and code so the game doesn't have any audio for now. It's a small but hopefully ~~terrifying~~ cute experience!

Doomsday Care running on a GBA SP This Game Boy Advance SP (AGS-001) is twenty years old and kicking, pray forgive its raw, unkempt nature

Did you know you could also play GBA games on your Nintendo 3DS?

Ratings

Overall 957th 3.234⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1184th 2.469⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 598th 3.355⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Theme 674th 3.563⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 240th 4.203⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Humor 590th 3⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 861th 3.283⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 43🗨️

Feedback

Megh Menghani
19. Apr 2024 · 17:29 UTC
Great pixel art. But for a jam game it was a little to slow.
GoBigRedFan
19. Apr 2024 · 17:32 UTC
I really like the art, and it's so cool that you actually got it working on a GBA (I wish I had the hardware to test). There's not really enough of a "game" here yet to critique on that level, but I can definitely see how you could develop it in a lot of interesting directions from this starting point.
Adam Gallina
19. Apr 2024 · 17:37 UTC
The art was really good, like gobigredfan said, it would be nice if there was more 'game', as I ended up just clicking each action over and over, and the stats never dropped.
Dan Allison
19. Apr 2024 · 17:46 UTC
When submitting my game I laughed at the console dropdown list you could choose from having so many options and it honestly make so happy seeing somebody actually using it! And it's GBA no less (one of my favourite handhelds for sure).

Game itself is really cool. The monsters that I saw all look great (Though I was expecting my cat hybrids to be a lot cuter haha) and I love the background art/UI as well. Only bit of feedback for me really would be to have some kind of indicator as to how close the monster is to evolving. But that's not even a huge deal really, I was fine just letting it run in the background for a bit.

I need to specifically call out the 3rd level of the cat/skull (Won't post a picture cos spoilers) as being incredibly cool, it came a long way from the goofy wee dude at the start. Loved the ending scene as well.

I love this, I think it's super impressive and a great achievement for a jam, huge well done.
Erivas_Soulares
19. Apr 2024 · 18:39 UTC
Taking it from a game perspective, it still lacks a bit. But I can see it as a passion project with a very specific purpose and limitations in mind. You'd choose a hardware, embraced its limitations and built a funcional project. It's creative and well built.

It's always nice to jam alongside with such creative drives! Keep your work, I really want to see it with more content and Features later!
asfdfdfd
19. Apr 2024 · 18:54 UTC
You have my respect for GBA programming. Also great pixel art. Really production quality!
🎤 Kyrio
21. Apr 2024 · 14:44 UTC
@dan-allison Thanks for sticking to the end! I just uploaded a new version after being too tired to work on it this week. It now has a timer at the top showing you when your creature will evolve, and I also added the rest of the animations my teammates made during the jam, so it's a lot more lively and responsive! Each stage is shorter, too. I wish these things were in the jam build so it's a little less frustrating, but we're a lot more happy with the game now :slight_smile:
monika
21. Apr 2024 · 18:35 UTC
Love it! The pixel art is fantastic. Lost one run because my real cat was demanding attention, and my second run had different starters but a same middle evolution - do you have the full evolution tree somewhere?

![monster.PNG](///raw/ed8/1/z/64a1f.png)
🎤 Kyrio
21. Apr 2024 · 18:58 UTC
@monika The next form you get depends on your most filled stat at the moment of evolution; we have three forms per stage with each one corresponding to bloodlust, wrath and swagger (I particularly like the final swagger form). So it's not really an evolution tree but I'm told this is what Tamagotchis were like :smile: Thanks for playing!
Ale
21. Apr 2024 · 21:52 UTC
HOOOOOMEEEEEBREEEEWWWWWWWW!!!!

![IMG_20240421_174015_878.jpg](///raw/8fb/z/64a62.jpg)

I'd forgotten how shitty the screens are on these things lol. It's a neat little idle game with great art. I actually played through it a few times because I was curious to see the different monsters. It does get kind of boring after more than a few playthroughs, but I enjoyed it :)
🎤 Kyrio
21. Apr 2024 · 22:08 UTC
@ale Yeah, it's actually a little surprising when you go back to those ancient LCDs with the front light... We even adjusted the palette because it was too pale on that screen.

I guess a lot of homebrew enthusiasts have modded screens or maybe even the rare backlit model (AGS-101). But I only have my trusty old SP. I did manage to try it on a Game Boy Micro and it's a lot better :wink:
Ben Toosey
24. Apr 2024 · 09:35 UTC
Firstly, the creature design/art is fantastic! It wasn't too clear what B, W and S stand for, and although the game is a little slow/easy, I still had a lot of fun discovering the different creature designs. Great work making it compatible with Gameboys too!
TheSmellofOxygen
24. Apr 2024 · 12:56 UTC
Thought I was missing something at first because gameplay just consisted of cycling between the three buffing actions. It's a bit passive. Impressive that you developed it to work on gameboy though, and the art is very good.
Whirlguy
29. Apr 2024 · 17:17 UTC
That was a really fun and unique game! Loved the art and the fact that whatever you choose to sacrifice changes the type of demon you get to summon. The game was a bit easy, I was hoping for it to get a little harder towards the end. I also really missed having audio. Still, I'm always amazed to see games that actually run on old consoles making it into the competition. I'm really glad I found this fun little game, great job guys! <3
🎤 Kyrio
29. Apr 2024 · 23:25 UTC
@whirlguy Thanks for the kind words! It ended up being a _little_ ambitious to make something for the GBA in three days when we had no experience with it, so the game had to be quite smaller as a result. We usually have a composer with us but he couldn't make it this time. Perhaps next time we can make something more well-rounded!
kanity
01. May 2024 · 23:25 UTC
My baby <3

![mybaby.jpg](///raw/c93/65/z/64ec0.jpg)

That was cute and chill, made me nostalgic (I played tamagochi as a kid!) and it wasn't too long, so I played fine in browser, just taking care of my lil monster non-stop x)

Loved the transformations, each one is cooler than the other! Really nice visual style ^^