Copyright 2021 Dave VanEe
Shock Lobster is a Game Boy ROM designed to run on the original Game Boy handheld video game system using a flash cartridge. It should also play well on most emulators.
Venture forth on your quest as a lowly lobster imbued with magical powers, determined to inflict lethal damage to whatever stands in your way!
You start out with a handful of skills allowing you to avoid oncoming obstacles and deal damage, but will use the pearls you collect on your way to unlock more skills, upgrades, and items to push your high score higher and higher.
This game is an entry for the Game Boy Competition 2021.
- D-Pad: Select item
- A: Confirm/unlock/toggle
- B: Back
- Select: Show/hide details (these are very important, and also included below)
- Start: Start game
- D-Pad: Select active button pair
- A/B: Use the corresponding skill from the current button pair
- Start: Pause/Unpause
Items are either usable at the beginning of battle or when defeat is near. The prompt will only be visible for 2 seconds, and can be hidden early by pressing START.
Press SELECT on the status screen to show detailed information about each skill, helping you decide how and when to best use the tools at your disposal for maximum output.
The A and B (X and Z) buttons are used to activate skills in combat, with the D-Pad used to select which pair of buttons is active. By default the selected pair will stick to the top pair when the D-Pad is released, but this can be disabled on the status screen. Skills may consume your energy, which is constantly refilling, or generate charges, which are consumed by finishers which scale with the number of charges used.
Several of the skills apply damage-over-time effects to the enemy, time-limited buffs to yourself, or have cooldowns before they can be used again, which are represented by bars on the bottom-left of the game screen.
The game speed and loadout/items used will be summarized on the game over panel, allowing you to compete with your friends to get the highest score using a specific combination of skills and upgrades!
Note: If the game is running from a flash cart without SRAM, skills/upgrades/scores will not be saved between sessions. To help with this, you can hold SELECT as you start up the game to unlock all skills/upgrades.
Release a jet of water, propelling yourself upwards and dealing 3 points of damage. The damage effect can only occur once every second.
Zap the enemy, dealing 40 damage. Generates 1 charge.
Shock the enemy for 5 damage and an additional 24 damage every 3 seconds over 9 seconds. Generates 1 charge.
Finisher which deals damage per charge, plus 0.5 additional damage per extra point of energy (up to 30 energy).
- 1 charge: 17 damage
- 2 charges: 31 damage
- 3 charges: 45 damage
- 4 charges: 60 damage
- 5 charges: 74 damage
Finisher which deals damage over time. Damage is increased per charge:
- 1 charge: 51 damage over 16 seconds
- 2 charges: 94 damage over 16 seconds
- 3 charges: 138 damage over 16 seconds
- 4 charges: 181 damage over 16 seconds
- 5 charges: 225 damage over 16 seconds
Finisher which increases damage done by 30%. Lasts longer per charge:
- 1 charge: 14 seconds
- 2 charges: 19 seconds
- 3 charges: 24 seconds
- 4 charges: 29 seconds
- 5 charges: 34 seconds
Instantly regain 60 energy. 30 second cooldown.
Reduce the energy cost of all skills by 50% for 4 seconds. Invigorate cannot be used while Focus is active. 80 second cooldown.
Increase the damage of Zap by 20% when Shock or Electrify are active.
Increase the critical strike chance of Disharge by 30% when Shock or Electrify are active.
Jet now launches you further into the air and deals double damage.
Critical hits from skills which generate charges generate an additional charge.
The periodic damage from your Electrify skill can now critically hit.
Double your base critical strike chance from 30% to 60%.
All direct damage has a chance to cause you to enter a state of clarity, which reduces the base energy cost of the next skill to zero.
Zap will now extend the duration of an active Electrify by 2 seconds (up to 6 seconds total).
Note: All items are consumable, only providing a single use for each purchase.
Let loose an initial strike of two 100 damage blasts. Each hit may be a critical hit. [Consumable]
Come out swinging with three 100 damage blasts. Each hit may be a critical hit. [Consumable]
Unleash an impassioned last-ditch retort, dealing three 100 damage blasts. Each hit may be a critical hit. [Consumable]
Bounce back from defeat for a second chance. [Consumable]
Adjust the game speed. Hiscores are tracked per game speed.
Enable game music.
Enable sticky button pair selection in-game, which will snap back to the top pair when the D-pad is released.
Press A four times to reset the save data. Details panel must be visible to activate. WARNING No final confirmation!
- RGBDS (https://rgbds.gbdev.io/)
- Emulicious (https://emulicious.net/)
- Aseprite (https://www.aseprite.org/)
- hUGETracker (https://nickfa.ro/index.php/HUGETracker)
- OpenMPT (https://openmpt.org/)
- Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/)
- gb-starter-kit by ISSOtm
- gb-vwf by ISSOtm
- hUGEDriver by Superdisk
- Sound Effect Driver and BCD functions by PinoBatch
- HiScore Library by H. Mulder
- Lucky Bestiary by LuckyCassette
- MinimalPixel Font by Mounir Tohami
- Electrox Font by Dennis Ludlow
Music From GB Studio Community Assets:
- "Tape It Together" and "Serious Ping Pong Matches" (cropped) by DeerTears
- "FridgeMusic" by Tomas Danko CC BY 4.0 Patterns were reordered to improve overall effect on hardware in game context
- "Darkstone Remix" (cropped) by Tronimal
- Save new highscore/pearls when game is over, instead of when returning to the status screen, as it feels natural to power off at game over and you'd lose your progress before
- Change corners of SELECT tiles from color 2 to color 1 (lighter) to match START tiles
- Add DAS (delayed auto shift) to left/right cursor movement on status screen
- Fix a single frame visual glitch at the end of the bootup logo effect
- Rework how the default player state is initialized to allow the game to run on flash carts without SRAM
- Add the option to hold SELECT when first initializing the player state to unlock all skills/upgrades, as a shortcut for players without SRAM
- Remove redundant bank switching writes which cause problem when run from a flash cart which mimics MBC5 (EMS or cheap repros)
- Ensure OAM is fully initialized before enabling objects for the boot logo effect
- Fixed horrible bug with electrify introduced along with tail call optimizations in ROM version 2.