Lost Remembrances

Lost Remembrances is a short game in which you try to recover the memories of three friendships. Each friendship is tied to an object, and each object must be saved from creatures that erode your memory.

Developed using PICO-8 for LoneRabbit's B&W Jam, April 2021. For the Jam, ruleset A was followed (black and white only, though technically PICO-8 uses 0xFFF1E8 for white instead of 0xFFFFFF). The theme for the Jam was "you only realize the value of something when it's gone."

Controls

Use the arrow keys to move your character:

• Left: turn in place, counterclockwise
• Right: turn in place, clockwise
• Up: move forward one space
• Down: move backward one space

Use Z or X as your "action button":

• Dismiss dialog boxes
• Fire shot (in battle mode only)

Exploring

There are four rooms: the shrine, the woods, the library, and the garden. The latter three are split into two sections each. The first time you enter a room section, you will see a short description.

Walk off the edge of the screen to leave the current room. Note that the room exits are not spatially related: if you leave to the west, you might not get back to the same place by going east. However, the exits aren't random, either. Leaving a room in a particular direction will always take you to the same destination.

You will encounter the shadows of three people who may have become dear friends of yours. Walk into an NPC to activate dialog. The room will reset, with the NPC now gone and an object in the other section.

When you find an object, walk into it to start a battle!

Battle

The battle room represents your memory, which you must defend from two types of creatures. The smaller ones can consume half a space at a time, but the larger ones take an entire space. You can move on intact and partially eaten spaces only.

Press Z or X to fire a shot. Each creature only takes one hit to kill, but beware that you can't fire again until the shot hits an enemy or leaves the screen.

To win a battle, you must reach a hidden score. Each frame, whole and partial spaces remaining add points to your score, but lost spaces do not. Therefore, you want to protect as many spaces as possible to end the battle quickly.

The battle ends when one of these conditions is met:

1. The target score is reached (win!)
2. The target score is not reached within 150 seconds (lose)
3. A creature touches the player (lose)

Regardless of whether or not you win the battle, you are returned to exploration mode in the room where you left off. The object you touched to initiate the battle will be gone.

Endgame

After completing all three battles, return to the shrine. You will see either the shadows of your friends or monuments, depending on whether or not you won the battle tied to each. You must talk to all three of them to activate the final object, which will display your ending.

There are three possible endings:

1. Good End: win all three battles
2. Normal End: win one or two battles
3. Bad End: lose all three battles