Green Memories

Having trouble running this on real hardware (game boy micro with everdrive). Any suggestions?

This was a great game with a surprisingly engaging survival mechanic.

I like the fact that you aren't merely babysitting survival bars, and when they run low, you have to disengage from the actual game to go do some grocery shopping.

Because moisture pockets only have a percentage chance to give you water, sometimes you have to decide whether it's worth the risk to keep digging on a 40% chance spot, or whether you should sprint back to a tree for safety and that 80% chance.

Add in a robot chase to make that decision even more complicated, whether you should try and fight it out or run, and you've got a very entertaining gameplay loop. Tying the weapon use to the stamina meter is a very clever move to marry the survival and combat mechanics.

There were a couple rough spots I feel could be ironed out. For one, maybe I missed some dialogue, but it was a little unclear what to do at first. Speaking to the person at the tower north of the home ship, I was told to go east, and get better ammo to help me fight the robots. When I went east, I found a robot and shot at it, but because it didn't die for several shots, I figured that I must not be powerful enough to beat it, so I spent several minutes circling around the starting area looking for either an alternate path, or that ammo.

I feel like it would have helped to make sure that the player knows they are powerful enough to beat these robots, but that it will be difficult to start with. Either that, or prevent them from returning to the ship until they have killed at least one robot so it's obvious they have to press on.

Second, the combat would be improved immensely if you could hold down, for example, the L button to strafe. (considering there's only two items to use, switching with just R would have been fine) Since you only fire in a straight line in front of you, you have to back up, stand still, and wait until enemies are in your line of sight before you shoot. (this might also be less of an issue if enemies had a more complex movement system, kinda like enemies in the NES Zelda)

The story was ambitious, and it was definitely nice to have a lot of context for what's going on. It was especially impressive considering this was a game jam game. Overall, this was a very fine game, and I would recommend!