Alwa's Awakening Will Bring The 8-Bit Magic To Switch Next Week

getting this.

I like at 29 sec in:

"We've Played a bit of the the game on Steam and think its rather brilliant" NintendoLife

I heard nice things about this game, and I intend to find out if they are truthful!

@NintendoFan4Lyf
Sure, let's have some flickering sprites too, so that we can render a few more than the actual limit.

@RupeeClock It's just to clarify that the game will run in 60fps!

So getting this game and checking if the soundtrack is still available, which I doubt.

looks like my cupa tea but will be waiting out for a physical

GETTING IT!
Love this on the go is awesome!!

The assist mode is making it extra appealing to me.

Oh boy another 8-Bit inspired game. Hope it's good.

I love me some pixel art platformers but this one just looks, slow. I prefer the satistfying, fast paced movement in Super Meat Boy, Celeste, The Messenger, et al

Finally!! And they said it wouldn’t happen! This just made my day- I’ll be pre-purchasing this if I’m able to. Otherwise the second it goes up I’m buying. This looks amazing and I’ve had my eye on it on Steam for what feels like ages. So glad it’s at home in Switch!

@RupeeClock that's because most A++ titles can't be runned at 60fps. So when a simple game like this hits 60fps it's magical and amazing. With that said

The faux- retro games are played out for me now. It was charming for a long while though.

This goes in my same grouping backlog camp of The Messenger and A Hole New World. Love these 8bit faithful games. I got Zelda II and Mega Man vibes to say the least from the footage.

I liked it but the question that I have is :

Why a resolution of 400 x 240 ? I mean, I can understand the 240 but 400 ???
Maybe because of the 3DS ?

I love the look of this game, but the video above seems really sluggish. will wait for a review

Been looking forward to this one, yay!

60fps!!!!

@niner That's exactly what I was thinking. The slow movement really puts me off. For me it wouldn't need to be as fast as Celeste and Super Meat Boy but it's still too slow as it is.

looks like it could be really cool.

I seem to remember this one being pretty neat on PC and I enjoyed the soundtrack. Definitely goes on my watch list!

Oh snap, an 8-bit looking game on the Switch running at 60FPS?!

Pulled out all the stops for this one.

Looks like some awesome fun, but...
My god, your game that you developed that could likely actually run on hardware (if you were trying) from the 80's better be able to run proper.

"Our game runs like it should," just... doesn't feel like one of those... selling points, ya know? Especially from a title looking like this.

@RupeeClock
Seriously.

The processing power required must be staggering. Who snuck a PS4 pro in my switch!?

I'm getting quite fed up with the 8bit faux-retro bullocks. That, and cube-built games. I don't care how good polygod, or whatever that Pokemon game might be... its shovelware.

I'm actually excited about a slower-paced platformer. I'm getting old, and my hands get sore after too much twitchy gameplay (and I honestly don't think it's because of the Switch's controller; I notice it on my Genesis as well, and I love the 6-button there)

60 fps but no 4k, why even make games that are unplayable thanks to the new standard. No buy.

Nah i won't pay. Better things to spend money on.

8bit inspired but looks better than most SNES games... fair price. Wont buy but looks decent

Some of those screen shots really remind me of Zelda 2. This game looks promising but I may wait for a review first.

One of the developers here

@nintendobynature Zelda 2 was a huge inspiration!

@JJ286 The NES soundtrack on cartridge is available on our website.

@Cobalt It's the NES resolution but we added so it plays in widescreen. I think Shovel Knight did the same thing.

@MikaelForslind

Yeah, I know that the NES displays 240p, no problem with that BUT why 400 pixels for the width ?

426 pixels are requiered for a 16/9 aspect ratio...
So, two solutions then :

Or, the game won't be fullscreen.
Or, the game is gonna be stretched to fill the 26 missing pixels.

As a developer myself, I don't get the logic behind that choice, except if the plan was to bring the game on the 3DS because the resolution there, is 240x400.

@Cobalt We started development of Alwa's Awakening in 2014 so I can't really remember exactly how we decided on just that resolution. But what I do remember is that all levels consists of a 16x16 pixel grid and if we use 25x14 tiles we get 400x224 in resolution and then we have a HUD at the top that is 16 pixels high giving us 240 in height. And yes, you are correct that Alwa's Awakening is not in 16:9 but instead there are a few black pixels on each side of the screen so the pixels scale properly.

There are properly better ways to do this than we did back in 2014 but this was the first time we made a game so I guess you learn as you go along. The black borders are barely noticeable and the game plays great

@MikaelForslind

Yeah, I understand but do not mix view on screen and level_size.

Basically, what you said is that you wanted to "fit" the view to have tiles of 16*16 to cover the view.
I'd say that's almost a non sense, except if the game would play screen by screen ( such as Bubble Bobble for example)

But whatever, you did an AMAZING job because Alwa's Awakening is one of my favorite indie games ever...
From my perspective, you've captured the essence of the 8bit era and have transposed it with your touch.

You know, I'm more into the 32bit graphics era in general (even the game that I'm working on displays that kind of visuals ^^) but I admire how great your game looks even if you have used an 8bit colour palette. Fantastic job.

@MikaelForslind it's always great hearing from the developers of the game so thanks for commenting. I have a love/hate relationship with Zelda 2 lol. Love the different style/platforming of the game as its unlike any other Zelda to date. But hated how hard the game was. Will alwas awakening be as hard to close to Zelda 2? Or a little more user friendly?

@MikaelForslind thanks.

@nintendobynature Alwa's Awakening is a challenging retro adventure game but we did change a few things into a more modern approach. For example, if you pick up an item, destroy a boss or activate a checkpoint that is always saved so that means when you die you never lose any progress. You can just always just pick up and continue playing. But the rooms in the game can be kinda challenging but as long as you make it to a checkpoint you never have to replay them.

Lastly, we also added something optional we call Assist Mode (very much inspired by Celeste) allowing you to modify the game in a few ways. E.g turning on item locations and enabling instant respawn meaning that if you die you just instantly respawn in the same room.
This mood is entirely optional though but perfect for someone who wants to experience the game but doesn't appreciate the difficulty level.

Lastly, I absolutely adore Zelda 2 but I never finished it as a kid. I think the first time I actually completed the game was when it released on the Virtual Console

Why is it in slowmotion?