The Bowyage[SAGE 2023]

Long time ago, in the 90's, an Italian-Argentine named Marcelo Padalustro designed a game called "The Bowyage", which was a medieval platforming fantasy game, however when he sent the game to Nintendo to publish it they turned it down. While Marcelo thought it was for the blood that the game contained, it was actually because for how complex the controls were and they weren't willing to sell another third party controller.
Marcelo, frustrated by this, decided to send his game to a publisher in Taiwan and said publisher would slip it into the Russian market and hopefully counterfeit it in the Americas, unfortunately the NES was dying out already and everybody forgot this game existed.
Fast forward to the year 2022, a guy from the SFG community found the prototype and decided to rework it for modern pcs and modern controllers...

well or at least I think that's how the development of the game went.

The Bowyage is a low fantasy platformer inspired by the NES Castlevania games,  where you control Yew Bowman, a longbowman and a member of the low nobility, in his journey of conquests against his other two elder brothers.

Yew, lacking resources, figured that he needs to gain power to fend off against his two more powerful brothers, so with his trusty bow and arrow and his loyal army, he marches towards the path of conquest.

Features:

• 8-Bit graphics, reminiscent of the NES.
• Solid and fluid gamplay, that allows for frivolous movement.
• Amazing soundtrack, courtesy of Rushjet1(And Jkfite01).
• Brutal but well balanced difficulty, with obligatory super hard mode.
• Well thought level design to complement a whopping... two levels.
• Cutscenes that tell a story about political struggle and war.
  

Credits

• Rushjet1 and jkfite01 for the music.
• Konami and Capcom for the sound effects.
• Special thanks to all my playtesters, credited in the Credits.txt and to my friend Karel A. for the 'vania-style stairs.