Christmas SAGE 2023 The Bowyage(SAGE Crisma Edition 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 member of the low nobility and a longbowman, 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... two levels.
• Cutscenes that tell a story about political struggle and war.

itch page: https://yew-bowman.itch.io/the-bowyage

Conceptual art for those that want to draw Yew:

30/11/23 Changelog:

• Added story cutscenes.
• Added Avis Brutal quirks.
• Added Stage 2 Brutal quirks.

04/09/23 Changelog:

• Fixed the spawners.

03/09/23 Changelog:

• Fixed boss death collision and possibly the entire fight.
• Fixed legionaries damaging you even after death.
• Added second boss quirk.
• Minor fix to level structure.
• Minor fix to HUD

SAGE 2023 Changelog:

• Added one new level, adding more substance to the game with four more enemy types and a new boss.
• Added cutscenes to give clear story and character development instead of being crammed in boring walls of text.
• Minor QOL features like rebalancing and the such.
• Added a photosensitive mode for disabling flashing lights.

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.