Hey there - I'm the composer for the project. I had so much fun doing this! <3

If you want to check out the title theme, I posted it on Soundcloud! https://soundcloud.com/user-878227950/1-thyls-tale-what-an-opener

I've posted an incredible 14 minute high score to the game x) I'll probably beat that later if someone takes up the challenge.

There's a LOT of love being put in this, congrats to all of you guys. I was surprised to see how many features there are, with places to teleport back to the city, merchants to upgrade weapons & armor, a final boss, etc. Overall I'd say the standouts are the excellent music, the town level with its intro scene, and the characters animations in general.

The combat was challenging but fun, and most of all very forgiving, which was… removing from the "authentic retro" aspect of things, but quite welcome nonetheless! :D I enjoyed making progress throughout the map, and actually the only reason I lost a lot of time is because I was stuck at the place where we need to shoot arrows at the white blocks. It just took me a long time to understand that these white blocks were actual gameplay elements. Instead I backtracked and explore the map some more to find places I could have missed, and also lost some time trying to interact with the three magic altars(?) scattered around the map.

Human making arrow offrands at an altar (c. 1340, colorized)

Once I finally figured the white triggers, the puzzles and the final boss were pretty enjoyable :) So yeah with just some clarification on the white triggers the game would be a breeze to play. Great entry!

Realy liked the game! A lot of features and quite chalanging combat! The music and art are great as well.
Loved the pacing of the game. The small puzzle parts between the combat screens are a great addition to the game. The fact that you respawn at the same screen after you die is great. It may not be the most authentic retro part of the game but otherwise it would have been nearly imposible for me to beat the game :)

Thanks to @Wan for mentioning the white blocks otherwise I would have been stuck there as well.

One small thing I would love to see changed is the keyboard mapping. Using WSAD with the left hand and X,C with the right was a bit of a chalange. Maybe J,K as alternative inputs would be great.

I found one small "Bug" (not sure if you can even call it a bug). If you leave the room pictured below you spawn in the beginning of the room before instead of the end.!

This game had alot of charm! I liked the dash mechanic and how thid had to be used in combat sometimes. The music was very cool: very fitting for the game setting and theme, and made the gameplay very exciting.

Thank you all for playing the game and for giving feedback! We really appreciate it.

Oh damn, I really forgot about the graphic for the triggers. I will note the things and add them to a post-compo version.

Fun little game. I like the movement and mechanics. I thought the mix of combat, puzzle and almost platformer like sections was really cool. Much better than just fighting slimes all game.
Graphics - Neat, nice pixel art, where the white blocks just something that didn't have time to be textured or was it a bug?
Music - Great, Karam did an awesome job, very adventure-y.
Random bug I found is if you fall off an edge while charging an arrow you move slow when you spawn. Its fixed when you fire another arrow.
I thought the game played pretty intuitively, managed to work everything out so good job on that.
Overall a fun little game, I enjoyed it a lot.

My time was 722.6 seconds on my first run, looks like I beat Wan :P

Thanks @Ztuu for playing and the feedback. The white/blue blocks were just sprites I totally forgot about. They will be fixed in a post-compo version (which is to be released later this week).

If you'd like, you can also submit a highscore here on the website. But you can also wait until the next Tournament, which will start next week. :)

Very cool game! I loved the music a lot! I was impressed right away by the cutscene an setup of the town. Nicely done pixel art for the most part. The combat felt good, and I found it quite hard but really appreciated the lenient death mechanics, a true retro game would probably have just punished me and put me back at the beginning or something but I really like that you didn't.

I got a 529.8s run!

@Laguna I never took a screenshot for my first run so I did another and submitted a score. Lets see how long it takes someone to beat me :D

Fun tribute to the classic zelda style games. I can't help but feel like maybe you were bit overly ambitious with the project scope, maybe would have been better to aim for less features and polish up the ones you had a bit more. Yes I know the same can be said for like every game jam ever, including my own. But seemed particularly true here. For example I was initially confused because I was trying to interact with the villagers but they are not interactable apart from the couple you can buy stuff off. Also the shops are not really needed because of the way you respawn, you can beat the game easily without upgrading gear. The hit boxes for the some of the enemies seem to be a bit off, I seem to hit them with my sword from pretty far. Also charging around spamming my sword swipe can make things a bit easy, the end boss was a piece of cake once i switched from bow to sword. Also would have liked a consistent pixel size, some of the background/wall tiles looked a bit strange.

Ok, so criticism aside there was a lot to like, I liked the scene setting with the intro and the little village, a lot of the pixel art was pretty cute, I enjoyed the music (even if it wasn't very retro) and i enjoyed the combination of combat with options of ranged and melee and the puzzle elements.

My run was like 8:03 but wasn't fast enough with the printscreen.

Thanks @automatonvx for the constructive feedback! :)