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Force Bot - New NES homebrew


erockbrox

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Update for Force Bot.

I decided to expand the game by adding more levels and revamping all of the current levels that exist. Over the last few months the game has gotten a heck of a lot cooler and has exceeded my own expectations. When you are designing levels, inevitably you get better over time and so now I'm looking back at some of my older levels and purging them and replacing them with better versions. The final result will be awesome.

 

 

Thanks.

Edited by erockbrox
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  • 1 month later...

So far these are the colors that I'm planning on having for the full and final game.

https://i.imgur.com/CmNVot1.jpg

The plan is to have around 200 levels. I'm currently at around 150 levels done, so that means I only have around 50 more levels to make and then this aspect of the game is more of less done.

Hopefully the game will be finished around spring 2021 or summer 2021.

It's like a sokoban game, but with new and/or different game play mechanics.

https://twitter.com/ForceBot3

Edited by erockbrox
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The other color combinations are fine, but the bottom middle has bad contrast between bg and other elements. Try using a darker color than the current blue bg, or changing both. The bottom left has similar bad contrast, but the color choice is different enough it doesn't affect my eyes the same way.

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  • 1 year later...

Okay guys, there it is. After 3 years of working on the game, its finished and here is the Kickstarter Pre-Launch page. I honestly don't believe it. I sunk probably thousands of hours into this project so finally I can cross this off my bucket list.

When I was growing up, it was the late 80's and everyone had an NES. All my friends had it. It was the first gaming console I ever played and owned and I've basically been playing it my whole life. So when I had the opportunity to make a game, it was a dream come true.

Force Bot was a very challenging game to make. There were lots of limitations with the engine I was using. The levels were only 8x8 in size (64 tile playing field), this is pretty small, and only a handful of assets, but through shear will power I made it happen and the game turned out AWESOME!

So come follow the project and check it out. You might think, oh this is just some cheesy block pushing game, but its not. It's probably the best and coolest block pushing puzzle game on the NES period.

I made the levels simple and logical so that you are always solving mini puzzles and such. And I switch up the game play and add in new mechanics as the game progresses. It's very easy to get into, pick up and play mindset that everyone can understand. Overall the game has a lot of charm and makes you want to beat every level.

Again, come follow the project and check it out. It's an instant classic on the NES and a great addition to the library of the NES console.

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ericschafer/force-bot-a-brand-new-nes-game

Twitter KS update 11.png

Edited by erockbrox
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  • 1 month later...

So let me talk a bit about why Force Bot is such a cool game.

- Pick up and play game mechanics and controls.

- Simple and easy to understand (you don't even need instructions)

- Difficulty goes from Easy to Advanced so that anyone can get started, but only few will finish.

- A jammin soundtrack

- When you beat a level you want to beat another level

- When you can't beat a level you want to come back to it later and beat it

- Puzzles are short, simple and sweet so it gets to the point. No convoluted puzzles here.

- Once you think you have the game down new mechanics are introduced

- When you beat the game, you want to find one of your friends and hand them the controller and see if they can can beat the game while you supervise. lol

Edited by erockbrox
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/15/2022 at 1:56 PM, a3quit4s said:

I got an email that the kickstarter was live but delivery isn’t until December 2023 - is that correct @erockbrox?

I did that just to give myself plenty of time with the orders. It will probably take a few months to order all the parts for the cartridges, but the actual delivery time should be much shorter.

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1 hour ago, erockbrox said:

I did that just to give myself plenty of time with the orders. It will probably take a few months to order all the parts for the cartridges, but the actual delivery time should be much shorter.

I was gonna say I thought you said the game was done but I understand the need to add a lot of time to source parts given the current situation. 
 

Edit: Backed for a glow in the dark!

Edited by a3quit4s
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  • 8 months later...
On 9/18/2022 at 1:03 PM, Khromak said:

I've also backed for a plain ass grey cart. Looks like a fun little game, looking forward to beating it! The levels shown in all the gameplay seem pretty basic, I hope there are some more challenging levels/mechanics later on. Either way though, very excited.

Some levels are indeed basic, but is so you can learn the mechanics. There are other levels which are pretty challenging, this is why you are able to Skip any level at anytime by pressing the Select button.

Later in the game there are newer mechanics that are introduced.

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On 5/22/2023 at 8:08 PM, erockbrox said:

Some levels are indeed basic, but is so you can learn the mechanics. There are other levels which are pretty challenging, this is why you are able to Skip any level at anytime by pressing the Select button.

Later in the game there are newer mechanics that are introduced.

Checking back in: I got my copy the other day (maybe it was a couple weeks ago?) and went through the whole game on the "hard" difficulty. I checked on the Easy and Normal and it seems like they have some (all?) unique levels, which is neat, lots of content there.

Overall I found many of the stages to be interesting, but I was really not a fan of some of the levels as, especially towards the end of the Hard difficulty, a lot of them relied upon fake blocks/invisible walls, which takes it from being a puzzle game to more of a guess-and-check game with no consequences for failure, which just leads to spamming buttons until it works.

In all, it was a fun experience and I'm glad I backed it. There are some rough edges on the level design, but the core gameplay was good.

As an aside: perhaps it's just my system/cart or something, but every time I paused the game the graphics would get messed up. I tried re-seating it a bunch of times and it seemed persistent. Not a big deal, I could still play normally, but it was quite distracting at times, and since pause is needed to reset the levels, pretty unavoidable.

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8 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Checking back in: I got my copy the other day (maybe it was a couple weeks ago?) and went through the whole game on the "hard" difficulty. I checked on the Easy and Normal and it seems like they have some (all?) unique levels, which is neat, lots of content there.

Overall I found many of the stages to be interesting, but I was really not a fan of some of the levels as, especially towards the end of the Hard difficulty, a lot of them relied upon fake blocks/invisible walls, which takes it from being a puzzle game to more of a guess-and-check game with no consequences for failure, which just leads to spamming buttons until it works.

In all, it was a fun experience and I'm glad I backed it. There are some rough edges on the level design, but the core gameplay was good.

As an aside: perhaps it's just my system/cart or something, but every time I paused the game the graphics would get messed up. I tried re-seating it a bunch of times and it seemed persistent. Not a big deal, I could still play normally, but it was quite distracting at times, and since pause is needed to reset the levels, pretty unavoidable.

Damn you went through the entire game and I’m still waiting for my glow in the dark to ship lol

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  • 3 months later...

Oh, thanks for the review of the game!

The hidden paths and such, that was only there because it was an asset of the game engine. So because there were few assets, I decided to use it.

I think a game can get a bit unfair, but only at the very end, to test the players abilities.

You said, that you paused the game and saw glitches? Yeah, I talked with infinite NES lives about this, we are trying to figure it out.

Also if you want to make some levels for the next game Force Bot 2, here is the online level editor.

https://puzzle.nes.science/home

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