HexenStorm

A short and difficult non-linear platformer/shooter

Controls:

• Left/Right: move
• Z shoot
• X jump
• Up: something something

The game is rather short, meant to be experienced in Normal or Hard difficulties, but I've included an Easy mode with unlimited hitpoints to allow anybody to finish it by brute force (you'll even get the good ending when finishing the game this way, but you'll feel cheap inside :)

Progress is saved as long as the cartridge is not reset/reloaded so if you collect an item or kill a boss, you won't need to do it again, despite restarting the game at the beginning.

This is my first Pico8 cartridge, and probably last. It started as the Ghosts'n Goblins homage I've always wanted to make, but turned into something else as I started to deal with map/sprite size limits. I had a lot of fun making it, especially the art, but the strict limits on tokens and code size made the lazy programmer in me cry :-}

Tips:

• Enemies are deterministic and follow simple patterns, try to learn them.
• You cannot control jumps, but you can shoot backwards while jumping.
• Bosses are only vulnerable in the head.
• After killing the first boss at the Cathedral entrance, you have to go back to the Cemetery and cross the open door below where you started.
• You can break some ground blocks (the brown ones with yellow dots) by shooting them.
• You need to get the 4 orbs to summon the second boss.

Game dev page at Lexaloffle