Arzea

Impressive given how short the development cycle was.

My only criticism is that too much of the progression was controlled by color keys rather than abilities. This made back-tracking a little tedius since you didn't really have any new abilities to play with.

Still, pretty good game.

This title has the makings of a solid entry to the Metroidvania genre.

However, since it is one large area as opposed to smaller, discrete rooms, the map is more important in terms of player orientation and conveyance than in other examples of the genre. That said, the functionality of the map left much to be desired. Colored door indications remain after the corresponding key has been collected, meaning that mental legwork must be done to figure out which areas are accessible when looking at the map. Although inaccessible upgrades are at times visible on the player's screen, the map does not reflect such discoveries; once the notion of the crystal shard (?) endgame is given to the player, the player has no choice but to wander the entire map without any real notion of areas that have been cleared of items and areas that have items remaining. Even if the in-game map does not do it automatically, an option to mark up the map (a la Broken Cave Robot) would have been useful.

I enjoy a good MV as much as the next guy. But it's a bit of a shame that I'm actively discouraged from pursuing the completion endgame, especially considering that the map is reset between plays.

Ahhh

I hit ingame help and Lo and Behold it brought up a map with all fragments and key locations marked.

Does anyone know how to get the Jump Orb in the last area? It's all the way against the wall (almost) in a blocked off room, and I can't find the passage in to it. I've searched all around it except for in the final boss area (which I refuse to go in until I get that jump orb). I have every single powerup (including the Shards) except that single Jump Orb. :'(

Thanks, yaddab.

I can add to that map, that the orange pixels are the Jump upgrades, and yellow and cyan should be the Heart and Speed upgrades, but I'm not sure which is which.

The major issue I have is that using the mouse for aiming means that I tend to naturally put the pointer over the thing I'm trying to hit as I don't have a good enough eye to rely on the dotted line as well as everything else.
As this is frequently on the edge of the screen, I will click and the game will pause - or, if I'm in the top right corner of the screen, rate the game! (I suspect that I have inadvertently rated this game either a 1 or a 5 because of this...)

Enjoying it thus far, but I suspect I'm not quite a good enough gamer to get to the very end.

I take that back. The Heart upgrade is pink, and the Speed is light green. But since there's a lot of green on the map, and some of the green pixels are the keys or shards, it can be hard to find the Speed upgrades. I found that the pixels with a Red value of 78 and Green value of 255, and a small Blue value are the Speed upgrades.

I am sure you are correct about the jump ones though, Ive been trying one for ages that is frustratingly out of reach - just!

The spoiler maps also show

"Colored door indications remain after the corresponding key has been collected, meaning that mental legwork must be done to figure out which areas are accessible when looking at the map."

I actually found this quite helpful, to tell me what new places I could go once I found a key.

I agree it would have been nice if the map remembered the items I'd seen but not collected.

Well that is a pain. It crashed on me (or said the plug-in did) and now I cannot play.

The opening screen is there and I can bring up the stats, when I select continue though I just get a black box. It hangs for a minute or so but then I know it is running because I can hear it but I cannot see it.

I've tried another game that uses unity and that runs fine, and I have also tried it in Chrome rather than Firefox to no avail.

Anyone have any ideas ?

[First off, this is a Flash game, not Unity. And it sounds like your save file has been corrupted during the crash. The only way is to remove the save file for this game, the location of which you can find on our Support page. The .sol file you want for this game will be in a directory titled arzea.swf inside one titled images.jayisgames.com. Let me know if you have trouble finding it. -Jay]

My save file also seems to be corrupted.

As I was decently far into the game, I don't want to restart. Any chance to repair the save file?

Apart from that, great game.

Greetings, Yohoo

[I doubt there's any way to fix a corrupted save file. You might want to try contacting the developer about it. -Jay]

Pretty decent, but with a few issues (although I guess with only 48 hours, that's inevitable.) The main one is that precision jumps seem to be rather difficult to do, although that's a minor quibble. The weapon damage also seems to be largely arbitrary, and levels don't seem to have much effect on it. A couple of the weapons seem largely useless too.

In spite of all that, I'm still enjoying it.

@Jay

Thanks, I was afraid of that,it worked but back to square one of course.

Shame I lost my progress but it is a great game, that I am sure I will come back to - soon (tm)

@Brian

I'm playing on Chrome, and I can't get the "help" map to open. I'm stuck at four keys and I can't find my way into any new areas. Feel like a dork, but there you are.

(Having other issues when I try to play on Firefox.)

Are you trying to click Map or Help? The map came up for me in Chrome version 17.0.963.46 (on Mac OS X).

If it's Help you're trying to click, try this link. That's the page that opens when you click Help.

What version of Chrome are you using, Carny Asada?

I'm getting some annoying bug. Sometimes my left/right keys seems to get stuck.
So my character just moves left/right by itself.

@yahoo and Jay

That sounds exactly like the place I crashed in, perhaps there IS a bug there.

98% completion, with the only thing missing being the medal for killing two enemies at once. I tried a few times and then decided it wasn't worth the effort.

The bug where it cannot load your game when you hit continue is actually fixed in the latest version of the game.

@Jay: Is it possible to regrab the game from Kongregate (or the Host This Game link on the title screen) in order to get a fixed version? Thanks!

[Version updated! Thanks for the note, Arkeus! :) -Jay]

Nice game from what I've seen so far, but for some reason the speed is terrible most of the time. It started out reaaaaaaaal slow, then came up to speed right after I collected the fireball (ie the same speed as Diamond Hollow, which I assume is right), then dropped back to terrible once I collected the first key. Never had this problem with any other game (I think), using Firefox. Any suggestions on what's going wrong? Thanks.

Great game, but it has some unforgivable bugs. It crashed when I died in the snowy area, the save file was corrupted so I restarted. I got up to the snowy area again, died, and the game crashed again. I don't feel like restarting a second time if this is going to happen every time. These bugs might have to do with the fact that it was made in 48 hours, so it's understandable, and it's very impressive in every other way, but I just can't get over the game breaking bugs.

@Arkeus and Jay

Thanks so much that worked a treat. I copied back my original file, tried with the updated game and now I am back where I crashed all fixed and dandy so far.

Also, obviously to anyone else that had a few probs try the updated file.

Thanks again

Yaddab

ps I had already given it a 5!

NOTE: A new version is now up that fixes the problem with continuing from a save. Just refresh the game page and you should automatically get the new version.

Please try it before deleting your old save.

@Jay may want to add that the map now saves as well. I meant to add that but I forgot, sorry.

I cannot get that jump crystal at the very top of the green section. Which I think I need in order to get the blue key (which I believe is next if the numbers are ordered on the help map). Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Lys

Really?? How do I jump across the big pool though to get the blue key? I have one jump crystal so far and can't reach it.

Lys

omg i didn't even think of that. Thanks!

Yay new version! And the worst bug is gone! Woo! Great game.

Many, many, many slips, but:

Jay: I'm running Chrome 17.0.963.46 on OS 10.5.8 (yeah, I'm a Luddite). The "Help" button didn't link to anything for me. I'm going back in and seeing if the fixed game gets rid of the glitch.

I think part of my problem may be that I need to be pixel perfect in a particular jump, but I freaking cannot get back to an area and it's driving me nuts.

Nice game. Just when I was thinking "oh I do wish there was a health indicator on the final boss, so I could see how close I'm getting" . . . then I won :)

Also, am I supposed to be able to interact with stuff like the cat, the red lever near the pink key... because nothing I try lets me interact with them.

[I'm also using 10.5.8, which doesn't support Flash Player 11, which this game won't play correctly without. Luckily, Chrome comes with it integrated within it, but it's possible that your Chrome also has the standalone Flash Player 10.3 installed (if you installed it for Firefox, for example), but you can disable it. In Chrome URL bar, type "about:plugins" and look for Flash. If it says "(2 files)" then you have both Flash Players installed, and it could be causing conflicts. Click on the "+Details" button on the top right of the display, find the Shockwave Flash 10.3 plugin, and click "disable". Hopefully that will fix your issues in Chrome. -Jay]

@Carny

I am not sure about the kitten yet, I think it is there to taunt us atm.

But Re the leaver

About the kitty:

What's the ending of the game?? I came across a magician a while ago and had to fight him. But now that I got all medals and items I'd like to know what to do.....

Never mind...killed the kitty, found the place and finally back home with 100%

This is a silly question, I know, but, how do you win the game? I have all the shards and all the keys and most of the powerups, but now I'm just wandering aimlessly. Little help?

Nevermind. Found the boss tucked away down there on the right. I got everything but one of the speed powerups. I think a powerup map would be very helpful for those obsessive completionists like myself. Otherwise, a very fun game!

@Jay -- D00d, you are so smart. In fact, I do have two different versions of Flash on Chrome. So I've disabled v. 10 and will try again with just 11 running.

Getting the pink key did open up new vistas for me, although I am still trying to handle the wizard. (It was one of those real, forehead-smacking power of posting things where I realized what I needed to do right after hitting enter.)

Was there a point to killing the kitten? Because I did it and it seemed like nothing happened.

Arzea Guide

As others have noted, the powerup map is available by clicking the "Help" button at bottom-right.

Nice game. Impressively large map. I liked the nods towards trying to make the different areas feel different, with the room shapes and sizes and so on.

I was incredibly frustrated to discover that if I beat the final boss with "90% completion", it ends the game such that if I click continue then it takes me back to my last save... but without my accumulated map. Without my map there's no way I'm going to bother retracing my steps to get those last couple of shards.

The areas did feel a bit samey. The spells mostly worked like keys rather than actually giving you new abilities; I'd have preferred it if, say, the freeze spell could turn killed enemies into ice blocks you can jump on (that disappear after a few seconds), or something. The weapons basically all work the same way and they don't even seem to have particular strengths and weaknesses, so there's little reason to switch between them apart from those enemies.

And as for jump upgrades... I don't really like this kind of "gradual" jump height upgrade. I like a Metroidvania where there are areas which I clearly can't jump to, then I get a jump upgrade, and revisit them to see whether I can now jump to them. When there are ten jump upgrades, all tiny incremental increases, that's not really the model.

Nonetheless, this was a good fun exploration-fest.

I am having trouble with getting the last shard. I have full jump stat, but the one that is in section 1 (of the spoiler maps) seems just out of reach if I attempt it from below, and double jump doesn't seem to work if I try to hit it from the left, on top of the floating island.

The section is the one at the bottom of the giant space open to the 'sky'.

Thanks