New videogame: "The Clown and the Secretaries"

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I'm making the game with Game Maker, but I intend to actually port it to the NES in some near future. And yeah, I think I know what you mean. It is ironic that I choose a limited system to represent something characterized by "taking a lot of space".

But I love the system!! I love the challenge to accomplish an experience as pleasant as possible within it's limitations. I particularly like the late NES era when the makers developed more creative ways to handle the graphics. Check "Kirby's Adventure" and "Battletoads".

I'm going to talk about my game from a NES point of view in the following paragraphs...
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***Size of the inflations***

For a practical gameplay, it is usually convenient that the characters don't be very big, because of the limitation in the amount of sprites the NES can display at screen at once(sprites are 8 pixel wide images that move over the background). But I think that never stopped Dig Dug from being an enjoyable inflation game.

I also intend to include expansions that look bigger, and here's where creativity comes into play too.
Currently, the inflations available in my game are 24 pixels wide during gameplay, and 32 pixels wide the ones that appear at the "THE END" screen. These are all sprites. But in the backgrounds you can put everything you want within 4 KB at once in graphics. I'm working on a rewarding image displayed when you surpass the hi-score, which shows you a detailed secretary inflating, almost as wide as the screen. It's a still image, but very detailed. Drawn at the background. This will probably be seen on the next update of the game.

There is a disadvantage the backgrounds have over the sprites. The sprites can move freely over the screen, while the backgrounds have to be alligned to an 8 pixel wide and high grid. So if you draw the hero and enemies at the background, they will move jumping 8 pixels, and give a more latched feeling.

There are two more instances in which I intend to do bigger inflations through the help of the background.
One is related to a power up I intend to add, which allows the player to take one secretary, and inflate her very big, bigger than normal gameplay inflation, until she explodes, throwing away all the other enemies from the screen. In this case the secretary will be drawn at the background. There will be a little visual jump to allign the secretary to the grid when caught, but I think it will be acceptable.
The other instance will be when defeating bosses(there aren't any bosses yet). Not animated, but a detailed sequence of the boss inflating will be shown drawn at the background, like if you were reading a comic book(the kind of cutscenes you see in NES games after 1989, by instance "Ninja Gaiden")
These are in my mind, but I'm not sure when they will be done though.
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*** Imagine having this in actual cartridges ***

This might sound crazy, but I intend to contact Nintendo at some point to discuss making an actual official release for the actual NES in actual cartridges. With the official seal and everything. I think many people would actually love to buy a new official NES game and play it in their old consoles.

There is something very ancestral and nostalgic about it (the word "nostalgia" is usually asociated with a little bit of sadness, but I tend to use it as "fun with the past"). There is also some special charm about the simplicity of the NES. Those simple controllers with two buttons. With just that, so much fun. So much fun with such creativity to overcome the limitations. That lovely 8 bit music...(I admit my music isn't that great yet, but it will !!).

Now I've updated the FREE version: LINK

(The link is the same from the beggining, but I post it here so you don't need to go back to the first post)

I added the expansion sound, now there are 10 levels, the inflation is the whole body one instead of the face one, among other things.
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Enjoy!! :-)