“Goodboy Galaxy” by Rik Nicol, Jeremy Clarke, Emi Monserrate, Jesse Zhang, Theodore Sterchi, Kimitaka Ogawa, Rafael Cano Malagón, Lyndon Ang, Gregory Parisi, Matheus Barreiros, Fabi Behling, Mansour Sorosoro & Adam Saeed, featuring characters created by Byungkyu Lee & Theodore Sterchi.
“[A] exploration-focused adventure platform game in development for the [twenty]-years-old Game Boy Advance. [It is] kind of like [“Cave Story”], or a cuter [“Metroid”].”
Almost three years ago, we recommended the nifty ‘anti-metroidvania’ “Goodboy Advance” as part of our coverage of the forty-third Ludum Dare. In the jam game, an astronaut dog crashed his red rocket on an alien planet after a sudden power failure and had to go in search of special power gems needed to recharge the ship. Actually, the planet only offered exactly one area that the animal hero could enter, but there were three different entrances to it. Whenever you passed through one of these passages, you lost one of three pieces of your equipment (either the shield, the jetpack or the blaster), which meant that you had to get to know the same area in three completely different ways.
So if you lost your blaster, for example, you could not attack any of the aggressive life forms on the planet and had to adopt a more passive play style. Without a shield, on the other hand, it was impossible to traverse longer distances if the ground was covered with spikes, since holes in a spacesuit are not exactly helpful for surviving in an oxygen-free environment. On the other hand, if the jetpack suddenly disappeared, it was no longer possible to reach certain plateaus, so you had to look for an alternative route.
The freely available demo of “Goodboy Galaxy”, released as part of the (unsurprisingly, but fortunately successfully funded) Kickstarter campaign, still follows this grandiose idea under a slightly changed name. It also offers audiovisual improvements, much more content in the form of new characters and secret collectibles, and a short plot including a cliffhanger. So if you have ever wanted to experience in playful form how the same level design can be perceived in completely different ways thanks to the absence of certain character features, you should not miss out on this tour de force! [PLAY]
