Buddy Book Battle

DESCRIPTION

This is my entry for the Gameboy Showdown 2023 jam.

The game is a classic RPG like the original Dragon Quest, but with the structure of a classic NES Mega Man game. What that means is that you choose a character to play as, and they come with a unique spellbook. You then pick a dungeon to play through, which has a randomized boss at the end. After beating that boss, you gain access to their spellbook. It'll make sense when you play it. 

STORY

I didn't have time to fit the story in the game, so here it is: there exists a magical race of beings called buddies. Through the use of spellbooks, they can use powerful magic. However, they can't actually read their own books. They have to partner up with a human who can read their book. Further, in order to draw out the full potential of each book, the buddy and human pair have to have a strong bond. And the best way to deepen their bonds is through combat.

One day, a buddy named Paige suggested to her group of friends that they should hold a friendly battle royale in order to increase the bonds with their partners and strengthen the group as a whole...

(Yes, I stole this directly from Zatch Bell lol. Also, other than the player calling out commands during battle, the human partners aren't directly represented in the game. I didn't have the dev bandwidth for that. Small indie dev, please understand.)

GAMEPLAY HOW-TO/TIPS

• The controls are: J/Z = A button, K/X = B button, WASD/Arrow keys = D-pad, L/Enter = Start button 
• From the pause menu, you can select any spellbook that you own and unlock new spells. The currency is FP (Friendship Points), and you get them as a reward from battle, like experience points.
• SAVE OFTEN! There's a save point like every 3 rooms or so. Take advantage of them! Every once in a while, the game might freeze up at the start of battle. But on the bright side, that's the only remaining bug that I know about. I think I fixed the glitch, but you never know.
• In order to play as the locked buddies, beat them in a playthrough and then beat the game.
• All of the buddies are relatively balanced, but start with Paige if you want healing spells, Ninja if you want hard hitting magic, or Tad if you want busted status spells.

CREDITS/RESOURCES USED

Bownly - Tilesets/map for the library and 1st dungeon; battle art for Ninja, Thingy, and all of the world 1 enemies; overworld sprites for Paige, Tad, and Ninja; a singular overworld sprite for Dorothy; title theme arrangement; some template engine code for the overworld sections

GibbonGL - Tilesets for the 2nd and 3rd dungeons, overworld sprites for Thingy

LuckyCassette - Battle art for every non-world 1, non-buddy monster

TipTopTomCat - Every non-title screen track

RoleMusic - Composed the title theme