Skulldude doesn't remember much, he just feels a deep soul-burning hatred towards the slimes. Help him unleash his wrath as he storms the slimes' dungeon increasing his fiery power as he goes.

Controls:

  • <z> - shoot fire, hold to auto-fire and move slow
  • <x> - dash forward/become invulnerable for a little bit
  • arrow keys/d-pad - move around

Tips:

  • Dashing can go through enemies and their bullets. Learn to use it well, it's critical during boss fights.
  • Finishing all enemies in a room makes that room cleared even if you die.
  • Look for suspicious pixels on the map to find secrets.
  • The game can be finished in less than 10 minutes, how fast can you do it?

Features:

  • a flaming skull dude
  • 32 rooms filled with lots of slimes, power-ups and secrets
  • 4 boss fights
  • lot of bullets

This is my entry to the #3cjam, it was a lot of fun working on it. Special thanks to enargy for organizing it and the rest of the pico-8 community for being all around plain awesome!

In case it's not obvious, the original Zelda was the main influence making this game.

Enjoy and please don't heasitate to send feedback my way!

View skulldude's Full Map

Update 1.01 (11/9/2017):

  • upgrade menu now waits a second before a selection can be made, should avoid accidental selections
  • unreachable pickup orbs are now persisted between sessions
  • front end doesn't go crazy anymore after a little while
StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
(39 total ratings)
AuthorGuerraGames
GenreShooter
Made withPICO-8
TagsBullet Hell, Dungeon Crawler, PICO-8, Shoot 'Em Up, Top down shooter

Comments

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Could u please provide a png (pico8) or windows (exe) downloadable link for the game?

My death amount went from 4-5 as soon as I won

Also I was listening to a mashup of "The Only Thing I Know For Real" and "The World Revolving"

Original Date of this screenshot: 2023-06-18

z and x are very annoying buttons to use imo, how can i change those

does anyone know how to get the upgrade orb stuck behind the wall? by the way, great game!

some pixels have spaces between them, there are hidden walls

Very fun! Memorable dungeon design despite graphical limitations (although looks great as well) with well-considered mechanics. I also really enjoyed the bosses, especially the ones with reverse snake-like progression through the battle. Nice surprise for a cosy retro evening.

They call me the dude...

but supa good too

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supa hard

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4:45

0 deaths

I did it with some help from an expert! She even wrote the strategy guide.

11 deaths, 16 minutes, max upgrades. Great game!

the player kinda looks like the gd icon unlocked by beating jumper xD nice game but i would be glad if the player would respawn in the last cleared room the player was instead of having to spend some time getting back to the room

26 deaths, 26 mins

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Love the aesthetic and music - Overall a really enjoyable game! 

Has definitely inspired me to take up game development.

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So fun and challenging! Love it! <3

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Cool gameplay, nice and clean! :)

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Completed it in 50:19 with 33 deaths. Hugely fun, enjoyed the whole game. I'll probably come back to this game and try to speedrun it some time.

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I beat the game in 20 minutes and 22 deaths. It was very fun and made me smack my descktop a couple times!

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really great game!  it took me a while to get through it... 40 minutes and 35 deaths (yeah, i'm not good at this kind of game).  love the music, but after that long i wanted it to go away.  it would be nice to be able to mute the music, but not the sound effects.  also, i wanted to try to do a faster second run, but it's not clearing my progress after i reset the game or do a hard reload of the page.  is there another trick i should try?

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ah!  i found out pressing P or ENTER brings up an option menu to reset progress.  i didn't see that anywhere in the instructions above, so might be a good thing to add up there. second run-through took 20 minutes and 12 deaths. :D

no. that is a built-in feature of the pico-8

either way, it's a good thing to mention for those who might not be familiar with pico-8 options.

i suppose, but then wouldnt that go for every pico-8 game?

yep.

(1 edit)

4 years later... 23:37 and 21 deaths.  i didn't remember the bosses being as tough, but i guess i improved on my previous time/death count.  still a fun game!

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Really fun game. Didn't do a speedrun as much as I did a two part epic. Keep up the good work.

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Watched this last night!  Very entertaining run!  I noticed you didn't realize dash gives you temporary invulnerability until the last boss, knowing that should make further runs easier.  Thanks a lot for playing the game and recording the run!

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Amazing game, fully finished and polished!  I love it! Thank you so much, for making one ;) 

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Thanks Egor!  Glad you liked it!  :)

I'm pressing every button, yet I can't start the game.

what device are you using?  if you're on a PC mashing z and/or x should do it.

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Really great game.  Good job!  I only had two complaints.  First, starting back at the beginning after every death was a hassle.  I didn't want to walk back through empty rooms over and over again.  The controls were good and felt responsive during combat, but I don't think they were well tuned for quickly running through empty rooms.  That's not such a bad thing, but it just made the restarting from the opening room worse.  I think just restarting from every boss would be much better.  The other complaint I had was twice I had cleared a room, opened the treasure chest, but left the room and died before going back to it.  This means I lost that level up.  Thankfully you had the foresight to put in more powerups than needed.  This might sound like it was just my fault, but both times happened in a room I could enter and kill all enemies/shoot chest to open, but couldn't physically reach the powerup from that entrance.  I don't think that was a good design.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining too much.  I'm just trying to give some constructive feedback.  Overall, I thought it was a great game and I spent about half an hour to clear it.  I did not see the Zelda inspiration until I read that in the description after.  That's a good thing, I would think.  I'm going to go check to see if you have other cool games on here.

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Thanks for writing such a good detailed feedback, ThrashCaptain!

The more I think about your idea of making boss fights work like checkpoints the more I like it, token count willing I'll try implementing that in the near future.  My thought initially was that restarting at the very beginning was a natural time punishment for dying, but getting a checkpoint as a reward for destroying a boss sound like a good reward for the time invested on it.

As for your the other case, I noticed the flaw when I was developing it, but thought it wouldn't be as prominent as this only happens in one room.  I'll try fixing that as well somehow.

Thanks again and definitely check out my other games here on itch.io, would be great to hear what you think about those too.  :)

Jose

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Dig it.

Glad you do!  :)

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Good stuff! Pretty tough. Super pretty procedural art! Played before reading any descriptions - I could tell there were secrets but couldn't figure out how to open them; I'm guessing the answer is 'shoot the right spot'. I really like the upgrade/progression system. Reset twice at the beginning; accidentally maxed range at first as I was mashing to figure out how the chests worked. After that took 24:12 and 14 deaths. The everpresent timer makes me really tempted to do a speedrun or two...

Glad you're enjoying the game, Bob!  You're latest speedrun time (less than 4 mins) is truly impressive.  Have you considered recording it on youtube?  That would be cool to see.  :)

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Great work, I like the idea of using locking on as a way to deal with the limited aiming accuracy from pico-8's controls

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Thanks a lot, leaf!  And thanks for making it a featured game on the homepage!  :D