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Hello! Opening this thread as an information dump for Project Sword, an NES action platformer currently in development in collaboration with Bite the Chili (Gauauu)and myself. Hoping to get some conversation going about the game, the features we are working on, and the type of enthusiasm that may be out there as we work to build towards our early demo of the game. As well, hoping to document some of the development processes of the game here when possible. Gauauu had contacted me to see if I had an interest in providing graphic assets for a mid-size NES game that he could plug away at between releasing the fantastic Anguna and finishing the hotly anticipated sci-fi exploration game Halcyon. The latter being of special significance to my early interest in homebrew, I jumped at the chance. Gauauu proposed an action platformer inspired by the wall jumping in Sunsoft's Batman mixed with the twitchy pacing of Ninja Gaiden. Set in a fantasy setting inspired by the Princess Bride. All of this sounded like something I would be excited to play myself, so I agreed to help! We've accomplished a number of things already, Gauauu has a wonderful 4-way scrolling engine set up to handle the larger nametables needed for batman-like wall jumping stages, as well as created some tight and intuitive wall jumping controls. Additionally, we have bank switching player sprites, DPCM percussion, some impressive palette fades, and some interesting powerups. The engine is really smooth, which is about all I am qualified to say about it since Gauauu is the programmer and I am exclusively working on assets, hopefully he can share more about the programming in the project. We've got some test levels set up and some initial prototypes to test game mechanics. I also went ahead and composed about 4-5 songs to get us started building the prototype. I have some concept music posted here including our DPCM samples for the proposed Titlescreen/Attract sequence: My first task on the project was developing our player character: I started to draw a princess via princess bride but got bored with that and she quickly became a selectable playable character as well: Portraits contributed by my friend and musical collaborator Steve D'eau. These are WIP I started breaking down the tilesets to our source inspiration (batman, and Ninja Gaiden) as well as adding influence from games set in fantasy settings like Simons Quest, shadow of the ninja, and Megaman 6 (knightman). *fairytale motif inspired by the princess bride: Iterations of the main Sorcerer villain shaping up after a little advice from Mteegfx: More portrait work by Steve D'eau: The sorcerer in his citadel: Supporting characters: The original theme of the project has spiraled out quite a bit since I started heaping in all my TV/Film fantasy influences. I've been doubling down on watching swashbuckling/fantasy/high adventure films while I am working and have been spending a lot of time with MGM's 1962 Harryhausen stop motion knock-off Jack and the giant killer, Erol Flynn's 1938 Robin Hood film, Max Fleischer's 1939 Gulliver's Travels cartoon, Harryhausen's 1963 Argonauts, and 1973's Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and Ralph Bakshi's 1983 Fire and Ice. Of course, accompanied by the aforementioned Princess Bride. As a side note in this thread, if there are any swashbuckling/fantasy/adventure films that should be included here with this, I would love to hear about them and discuss them here. AS a personal note, I made a point to finish both Batman and Ninja Gaiden after starting this project, having the proper motivation allowed me to power through each and gave me a newfound respect for those games. Batman especially, what a wonderful game! Those visuals! That play control! That MUUUUSSSSSICCCCC!!!! (partly the inspiration for using DPCM on this project) Again, we're moving forward into our demo phase and will be looking for beta testers and feedback from the community, so if you have any questions about the project or wish to contribute feedback to either Gauauu, or myself you can do so here I am very clearly excited about Project Sword and look forward to sharing more with the community going forward. Keep an eye out for us!! Thanks for checking us out -team Sword

Hi to everyone on Video Game Sage, just got here because of @Scrobins Diamond Thieves post. Let me introduce myself and tell about my homebrew projects. Amaweks, freelancer pixel artist, Mangangá Team artist (some times music, level design, character design too, you know, we are avery small team), and solo game dev on my personal projects. There are info about Mangangá Team in our website www.mangangateam.com and even 2 free Sega Gen/MD homebrew games for download. There is my site and itchio site with my personal game projects www.amaweks.com and https://amaweks.itch.io/ been the last ones Virgil's Purgatory for MSX and ZX Spectrum, Devwill Too for MSX and ZX Spectrum, and Devwill Too Prologue for MD with Mangangá Team. That's it