New game: Tenebra!

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Haplo
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2023 1:14 am

New game: Tenebra!

Post by Haplo »

Hi all,

I am pleased to announce my first NES game, Tenebra. It is a port of my popular game that has been released on multiple platforms. The ZX Spectrum version won the 2022 game of the year award in the puzzle category.

Tenebra is an atmospheric puzzle game. Guide the hapless protagonist to the exit. Poor guy is afraid of darkness and refuses to walk in the dark areas.

Get it from: https://h4plo.itch.io/tenebra

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Move torches around, push lights on rails, find keys to doors, light up cold braziers, pass through archways that collapse behind you, find oil barrels to make your torches brighter, squeeze through cracks in broken walls, fix broken rails with a hammer, illuminate the sensors to open the exits... do whatever it takes to get out of there!

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Porting this game to NES has been a fun journey, specially since the NES architecture is so different from all the other platforms that I have worked with before. A huge thanks goes to Fiskbit who patiently suffered my ignorance and provided advice that improved the game in many ways.

I hope you will enjoy it!
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rainwarrior
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Re: New game: Tenebra!

Post by rainwarrior »

Nice game. I got to level 11 so far.
Dusan.Famicom
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Re: New game: Tenebra!

Post by Dusan.Famicom »

interestingly :)
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Goose2k
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Re: New game: Tenebra!

Post by Goose2k »

We spoke a while back about the game on Discord (I'm Matt Hughson), but I am now just finally getting around to trying it. Very fun puzzle game! I love how fast the mechanics are introduced (I'm currently on Level 9), and the way everything plays off each other is very interesting. I don't think I've ever played a game quite like it.

A had a few questions about the design if you don't mind:
  • 1. Did you ever consider making the "fog of war" not completely black? My knee-jerk reaction is that the game would be more fun without the "dark maze" portion; if I could just "see the whole map" and figure it out in my head. I could also imagine that it might lose something if that were the case.
  • 2. Along the lines of #1, the "fog of war" could behave more like Starcraft, where after "exposing" an area, it doesn't go completely dark after (but just darker than the lit areas). That would allow for the "maze" exploration but reduce the cogitative load a bit (which might be a bad thing).
  • 3. Was the choice to make the game black & white a technical one, or was there a design intention behind that? My gut is that it would be better with some color (even if limited) to help separate some of the objects a bit more.
  • 4. Was the choice to have no music a conscious design choice? I found myself thinking there should be a dark, ominous background hum or something.
Some other thoughts:

I found the flicker quite strong when playing on a CRT. So much so that I thought "how could anyone play like this?". However, I checked out the game in an emulator and found it quite subtle. Not sure if there is much to do about that, or if you care, but I thought I'd mention it. Thanks for including an option to disable it!

Have you considered reaching out to someone like Broke Studios to publish a physical cart? It seems worthy of a physical version to me!

If you drop a torch on a closed door and pick it up again, the door vanishes. Seems like a bug?
Haplo
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2023 1:14 am

Re: New game: Tenebra!

Post by Haplo »

Goose2k wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 1:35 pm We spoke a while back about the game on Discord (I'm Matt Hughson), but I am now just finally getting around to trying it. Very fun puzzle game! I love how fast the mechanics are introduced (I'm currently on Level 9), and the way everything plays off each other is very interesting. I don't think I've ever played a game quite like it.

A had a few questions about the design if you don't mind:
  • 1. Did you ever consider making the "fog of war" not completely black? My knee-jerk reaction is that the game would be more fun without the "dark maze" portion; if I could just "see the whole map" and figure it out in my head. I could also imagine that it might lose something if that were the case.
  • 2. Along the lines of #1, the "fog of war" could behave more like Starcraft, where after "exposing" an area, it doesn't go completely dark after (but just darker than the lit areas). That would allow for the "maze" exploration but reduce the cogitative load a bit (which might be a bad thing).
  • 3. Was the choice to make the game black & white a technical one, or was there a design intention behind that? My gut is that it would be better with some color (even if limited) to help separate some of the objects a bit more.
  • 4. Was the choice to have no music a conscious design choice? I found myself thinking there should be a dark, ominous background hum or something.
Some other thoughts:

I found the flicker quite strong when playing on a CRT. So much so that I thought "how could anyone play like this?". However, I checked out the game in an emulator and found it quite subtle. Not sure if there is much to do about that, or if you care, but I thought I'd mention it. Thanks for including an option to disable it!

Have you considered reaching out to someone like Broke Studios to publish a physical cart? It seems worthy of a physical version to me!

If you drop a torch on a closed door and pick it up again, the door vanishes. Seems like a bug?
I almost missed this! The forum didn't notify me of your post.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the game. To answer your questions:

1, 2: I had a version that behaved like the Starcraft "fog of war" that you described. It looked a bit unnatural to have areas slightly-lit without any light source. But it is an intriguing idea, and worth another try.

3. The concept I had in mind for the making of Tenebra was to create a game in an oppressive, dark dungeon where you can only see the faintest flicker of a torch, and the rest is total darkness. The minimalistic aesthetics were an intentional design decision as they fit my goal perfectly. The grayscale palette was the obvious choice for representing light and darkness. I experimented with adding some colourful elements, but they all ruined the atmosphere I was aiming for.

4. None of the other ports have music either, partly because I suck at making chiptunes. The Amiga and PC versions play sound of howling winds. For Tenebra 2 (on C64) I used an existing piece of eerie music.

As for the flicker, unfortunately I didn't have access to CRT to try it. Thanks for letting me know.

And the disappearing door is definitely a bug, and it means it also exists in the Commodore 64/Plus4 versions of the game as they all share the same source code. I know the Amiga and PC versions don't have it. I need to check the Speccy and CPC versions. Again thanks for letting me know!
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dale_coop
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Re: New game: Tenebra!

Post by dale_coop »

Tenebra! looks very nice. Great work on it <3
All I need: A damn fine cup of coffee!
NormaHanson
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2023 9:13 pm

Re: New game: Tenebra!

Post by NormaHanson »

the games you make, they're great, I hope to see you make more cool stuff.
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