Zip and zap your way to the top in this aquaventure!

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.

Note: Sound doesn't work on iOS using the web player at this time.

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.

Controls:

Keyboard Game Boy
ENTER START
TAB SELECT
XA
ZB
ARROW KEYS D-Pad

Gameplay Details:

Press SELECT (TAB) 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!

Emulating on Nintendo DS:

If emulating on a Nintendo DS using GameYob there will be a graphical glitch affecting the status and gameplay screens. I've fixed the bug in a custom build (until such time as the fix is merged into an official release): https://github.com/tbsp/GameYob/releases/tag/v0.5.2a. Lameboy does not have this glitch but does have 4 rows of flickering pixels below the gameplay HUD.

Source Code:

The full source code is available on github! Only the enemy graphics are omitted, as they cannot be distributed in that form under the license granted.

Tools Used:

Additional Code/Assets:

Music From GB Studio Community Assets:

  • "FridgeMusic" by Tomas Danko (CC BY 4.0) [Patterns were reordered to improve overall effect on hardware in game context]
  • "Tape It Together" and "Serious Ping Pong Matches" (cropped) by DeerTears
  • "Darkstone Remix" (cropped) by Tronimal
StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(5 total ratings)
Authortbsp
GenreAction
TagsGame Boy, Game Boy ROM
LinksSource code

Download

Download
Shock Lobster.zip 24 kB
Download
Shock Lobster (V1.3).zip 24 kB

Development log

Comments

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nice

Awesome game! Finally figured out how to play it - ha. How many levels (opponents?) are there. Is there a way to jump back to the level you were at before you died?

There are eight opponents in total. There isn't any way to return to where you were when you died. The game boils down to a race against the gradually increasing speed to see how far you can get before failing a jump. :)

hey, i have seen your comment in the font page and came to give your game another try, i love it! at first i tried to play it on my own and i couldn't understand how to play, but later i knew how and it was amazing, this game is so fun to play! ^^

(+1)

Excellent! Yeah, there's definitely a bit of a learning curve. Perhaps one day I'll add a tutorial. ;) Thanks again for the font!

¿final version?

I have some ideas to improve/expand this game, but don't know if/when I'll find the time to put into it. This may be the final version from me.

(+1)

Very fun (i'm addicted). I love the fact that you choose a lobster to be the main character, very original and great game design. Loved the graphics... I loved everything about this game! One of my personal favorites from the GB compo 2021. Everyone go and download this game!

Excellent! Lobsters definitely don't show up in games as much as they should. Thanks for the glowing praise!

I was a bit confused at first, but finally got it and had a lot of fun playing. I'm still not very good at it, though :) Also, your source code is really nice -- great work!

I'm glad you figured it out. It's definitely a little unusual, and I tried to come up with some better ways to introduce concepts, but this is where it ended up in the end.

Nice to hear the source isn't a mess. :)

Nice game! And cool game over music! :)

Thanks! I really liked that tune and was glad I could find a way to fit a little bit of it in there. :D Thanks for making it available!