Garbanzo Quest
Better Presentation for Tweaks Menu + Other Small Changes (0.7.4_346)
CHANGES
- Extras Menu is now only visible on the Title Screen
- Special Options no longer affects Dev Tools and has been renamed to just Tweaks.
- Added a Tweaks Icon on the File Select screen to show if it's enabled or disabled
- Fragment Count UI no longer affected by Pause
- More Toast message for file actions on title screen
BUG FIXES
- Player Icon now shows up properly in Keyboard/Gamepad Input Config
Tough Guy Mode + Bug Fixes (0.7.3_344)
CHANGES
- The Tweaks and Extras menu options can now be hidden, and you'll be asked if you want that when starting a new game. Existing save files can turn it off/on under the File Settings menu on the Title Screen.
- Chapter End text can only be dismissed with the "Accept" button now.
- There's a cute toast message when you delete a save file now.
- Textboxes proceed with the "Accept" button not the "Jump" button now.
- Added a few more random names for the file name creator
- Made the title screen music weirder and funkier
- The screensaver will no longer activate on the title screen
- Slightly improved the title questionare dialogue
- Your game time no longer increments on the Title screen or the Intro cutscene
BUG FIXES
- Can no longer open quickswap while talking to somebody.
- While leaving the Home Base you could potentially focus another room.
- Icons for players characters were not showing up in certain situations. I wasn't able to recreate it, but I refactored the super jank code that was powering it. So hopefully it's fixed???
- Ghostly should show up properly in the Screensaver now.
- You could pause the game after picking characters in the title screen, when you shouldn't be able to
- Ghostly can no longer move during the drawing minigame
Sound Check + Window Scale Multiplier Option + Bug Fixes (0.7.2_338)
CHANGES
- There's a new character in the home base that lets you access the "Sound Check" menu
- Added an option for Window Scale in Display options. When setting Window Scale, the game will remember the Scale you set when booting the game next time and apply it to the game window
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a visual bug on the title screen that could happen if you have spaces in your name
- Small change to overworld art, a certain structure didn't have proper water highlights at the bottom
- Small fixes and changes to Menu Options
- Fixed a bug in 2 player where if you died during a screen transition you and your ghost would respawn at the same time
- Fixed a bug where if you defeated a certain boss with 999 strength it would softlock the game
- Fixed some unfortunate level design in "Float On" where you could get stuck in a wall after falling off the screen
- if you retry after defeating the final boss you will spawn in a better location
- fixed a potential performance issue with "press up prompt"
Just some small bug fixes (0.7.1_333)
Thanks everyone for playing and reporting things! Please let me know anything about your experience through the in game reporting form, or by emailing me at garbanzoquest@gmail.com!
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a bug where, during the final boss, the camera would glitch during a certain point and softlock the game. I wasn't able to reproduce this myself, but there was some really jank code that I refactored which will hopefully fix this.
- When talking to the Magical Book you could press up again while they were already talking and start another dialogue.
CHANGES
- Improved the tutorial for the anti-gravity tiles.
- Very slightly better presentation on the anti-gravity state.
- One of the final bosses bullets moves faster and lasts longer now.
Early Access Version 0.7 is OUT NOW!
An important note about Save Data:
- Save Data won't be able to transfer, since pretty much everything is different or rearranged.
- Save Data for 0.6.1 will still be safe (there is a different file on your device for each version) and you will still be able to play version 0.6.1 as an alternative beta branch.
I encourage you to see for yourself in the game, but if you're curious here is a rough list of changes. I'm not very good at keeping track :^)
CHANGELIST
Narrative:
- The game now has a first pass at a simple narrative.
Overworld:
- 5 Worlds total!
- Another complete art and design revamp!
- Completed levels will show various stats and accolades
Levels:
- Lots of new levels, enemies, mechanics, etc. (37 levels in total!)
- Lots of misc. art revisions/improvements
- Lots of misc. level design changes
- Only the best levels have not been scrapped
- Revamped and replaced bosses
- Better secret level presentation
- Redid some songs too
- Improved the level clear screen (it's prettier and shows stats and stuff)
Home Base:
- Complete overhaul of art and layout
- Lots of new dialogues for everyone.
Updated Collectibles system:
- all the different things you could find (aside from friends) have been moved into a new FRAGMENT system. There are two kinds of FRAGMENTS littered about as secrets throughout the game.
Badges:
- Badges are built with BADGE FRAGMENTS
- Badges can now be changed at will anytime with QUICK-SWAP
- Lots of polish/changes on all the Badges
- Certain badges have been removed (Chime, Gum). The hint for missing something is now shown in the overworld stats box
Customization:
- Customization options are built with CUSTOMIZATION FRAGMENTS
- PAINT-COLORS: Instead of tinting the player character there are now custom defined palette swaps for each color. (Looks better)
- ACCESSORIES: You can now build and wear different accessories
- CANVASES: Various improvements to the drawing minigame
- You might notice FRIENDS sometimes wearing the customization options you unlock :)
2 Player:
- Instead of being tethered to each other, the non-advancing player will be teleported to the advancing player when they get too far from each other
- Icons show kind of where you are if you're off screen
- If you die, but your buddy is still alive you will turn into a ghost. You can fly around and stuff until your buddy makes it to the next room and you're revived. It's up to you to help, or to make your buddy die faster >:)
- Tweaks like HP and STRENGTH can be configured per player.
Characters:
- You can now play as my dog Frankie. Why not?
- You can now play as Ghostly. This is only available for player two. Ghostly can't be hurt and can mostly only fly around. This is a good choice if you have a friend that sucks at video games, but you still want to include them :D
- You can select between 4 different Characters at the home base and at the beginning of the game (Garbanzo, Pinto, Frankie, and Ghostly)
UI:
- Generally looks better
- Added art for keyboard prompts
- Improved gamepad prompts and added some more controller types
Rounding Corners:
- Things like falling of the screen no longer kill you in one hit. Instead you will bounce taking exponential damage each time you fall without reaching ground.
- While you're in the "fell off screen" state, hitting your head on a 1 tile high ceiling will have you teleport through it.
- If you are in a situation where you're about to be squished, the game will attempt to slightly push you out of the way. If there is nowhere to go, you'll die in one hit. AFIAK this is the only remaining scenario where you just die in one hit.
Mod friendly:
- All sprites are now stored as .pngs so you can edit/replace them
- All sound effects and songs are stored as .oggs so you can edit/replace them
- Assets can be placed in a folder called "Custom" in your Save Data location, so you can override things without modifying the original.
- The level editor and dev tools are now exposed for you to play around with. See "Extras" in the "Options" menu.
Misc:
- Rumble has been implemented! (Options to remove it too)
- The camera now moves smoothly as opposed to at a linear speed
- Master Volume option
WHAT'S NEXT
This update, I'm expecting, is the last BIG update before 1.0. In 1.0 I will be mainly adding more content and doing another pass on the narrative. I'd say what's in this update represents roughly about 60-70% of what I have planned for the game. There's still plenty of work to do, but I am slowly getting towards the end of development for GARBANZO QUEST. I'm thinking it will take me another year to get 1.0 done, but who knows!
Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you have fun playing the game!
- Zachary
Anyone Wanna Help Test GARBANZO QUEST?
Builds for Windows, Linux/Steam Deck, and Mac are available as a beta branch. See below for instructions on how to access the beta branch.
How to access the beta branch:
- Right click "Garbanzo Quest" in your Steam Library.
- In the right click menu select "Properties".
- Go the Betas tab.
- In the "Beta Participation" dropdown select "test".
- That's it!
Please feel free to share anything about your experience! Find a bug? A part of the game too hard/ too easy? Lemme know!
If you would like to communicate feedback to me you can either:
- Use the new "Give Feedback" button in the "Options" menu.
- Email me at garbanzoquest@gmail.com
I've done some in person testing with a small group of people on the main path of the game. I feel like I've done my due diligence with that part of the game. A lot of the extra challenging secret levels have received very little to no testing, so those might be a little rough around the edges. Information about your experience with the secret levels is EXTRA appreciated!
Anyways, thanks for reading! I hope it was worth the wait!
🌲 November 2023 Progress Update 🌲
The last version release of Garbanzo Quest was in January, so this version has almost been a year in the making! SO much has changed, too much to give a proper summary. It's pretty much a whole new game! There was a version of the game that I had ready early this month, but it felt like something was missing... So I've started another initiative to improve the narrative! Garbanzo Quest is an action-adventure game, so I think having a stronger narrative will help give more gravitas to the journey. It worked before when the game was shorter, but after adding so many new levels and worlds I really think the new narrative will add a lot!
To help with testing I have acquired a Steam Deck and an old MacBook! I set up my development environment on both. Supporting Windows, Linux, and Mac should be much easier now! These have already helped me to make big performance improvements!
With this version update I'd say the game is about 65% complete??? I'm aiming for January 2024 as the release for Garbanzo Quest 0.7! If it takes longer, don't be too surprised, heehee!
I really want to start doing more social media stuff, especially since I'm (hopefully) getting kinda closer to the game being done-done. I'm not sure exactly what that looks like. I read somewhere that you should be spending 50% of your time developing the game and the other 50% promoting it... The highest I've ever had it is probably around 10%... I would at least like to start doing monthly long-form updates like this one! If there's something you would be interested in me sharing, please send me an email at garbanzoquest@gmail.com.
As always, thank you all for the support! It sure takes a long time to make a game, huh? This November marks 2 years of full-time development on Garbanzo Quest! My tentative goal is to finish this game before 3 years is up (it is expensive to be alive).
If you'd like to help out with development consider supporting me on Patreon!
All supporters of any amount will appear in the Credits!
Anyways thanks for reading :^)
-Zachary
0.6.1: Bug Fixes and other Little Things
Just a few bug fixes and small content changes.
0.6.1 Changes:
- Fixed a bug where checkpoints could be set on top of spikes in certain situations (thank you to DMPuppet for reporting this.)
- When migrating major savedata versions the overworld checkpoint is set back the the beginning, in case that checkpoint isn't valid anymore. (thank you to ArsonsAra for reporting this.)
- Added another dialogue to the sign at the Early Access dead-end during certain situations. (Again, thanks to ArsonsAra.)
- Fixed a bug where dying during certain cutscenes would cause a crash. (Thanks to ME, I found this one all by myself 😎)
- Moved snow particles to front in Overworld (again, ME)
Thanks again to people for reporting stuff, you're much appreciated!
Hopefully in making these changes I didn't break something else 🤪
-Zachary
Early Access Version 0.6.0 is out now!
3-ish months in the making, this update includes a lot of polish on existing stuff and adds some new stuff too. With some much improved art and a better designed overworld the game is feeling much more like an actual video game! From what I have planned this is the 3rd of 5 releases (The 5th being the full release!) Now that the game's foundation is better figured out, future releases should have even bigger content updates.
I also figured out how to do language support. The foundation has been implemented, but I'm gonna wait until the full release to for-real finish it. I've found a font that supports a really good amount of languages. So far I've tested English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean and they all worked! I have no idea the process to get official translations, but at worst the game will support fan-translations.
Older saves will still cross over, but I've rearranged the levels a bit, so the overworld will have some broken looking paths. The game will still function just fine! All existing stuff has been at least changed a little bit, so maybe consider starting a new save?
I'm not good at keeping track of all the changes but here ya go (some minor spoilers):
New Stuff:
- Overhauled art
- Overhauled overworld
- Two new worlds
- 13 new levels
- New SFX
- New music
Adjustments:
- Buffed/ improved Badges
- Adjusted/ tightened player movement a bit
- Adjusted levels and bosses (earlier levels are a little easier)
- Got rid of bad levels (I think it was 6)
- Better fitting colors from Paintbrush friend
- Improved drawing minigame
Performance:
- Songs are now loaded based off a loadlist per level instead of just loading them all at the start (this cut the RAM usage by 75% lol)
- Tilemaps are loaded at boot now, which should eliminate load times and stuttering on older machines.
Options:
- New option: HP Display
- New option: VSync (Vsync was on by default before, you can turn it off now if that brings you joy)
- Better fullscreen behavior (should be faster)
- Game will fullscreen at boot, if you last played in fullscreen
QOL:
- Better 2 player device select (you now have to hold for a moment, also there's a warning for sharing a controller)
- Added the ability to cancel to several menus
Bugs:
- I fixed so many bugs, I don't remember
Thanks for playin!
⭐ Garbanzo Quest is Now Available in Early Access! ⭐
Garbanzo Quest Early Access is real and you can play it right now! I'm happy to have made it this far with this project and I'm looking forward continuing my work on it!
Hope ya like it!