This is a short article about how this game came to be and its inspirations

also a Thank You to the NES MAKER community and forums. A lot of my questions and problems had been answered. This project would not have been possible without the communication, trial and error, and the hard work done by the community.

This project started about the end of January 2023. I wanted to make a NES  Game similar to Donkey Kong and I wanted to add some of the puzzle platform elements from the Gameboy version. I enjoy those games a lot so I wanted to make something inspired by it. As you can see it did not end up that way. The only thing kept from that idea was the keys and doors. As I was developing the game I drew more inspiration from other games I liked on the NES, games like Megaman and Castlevania. the movement and overall gameplay I wanted to make similar to Megaman which is also why there is a Megaman-ish boss fight at the end of each area. It's also pretty obvious that the theme and location as well as the breaking of lanterns for power-ups is inspired by Castlevania. The Cover art as well is something I wanted to have as a throwback to  Castlevania for the NES  but with a  cartoony look. I also took some inspiration from The Adams Family Game for SNES. I liked the idea of choosing what part of the Mansion(or Castle in this case) to start in. I wanted the player to have the option to start at area 4 if they wanted although it would make the experience a bit harder. this is something that Megaman does as well, but with a level select. The theme of the game was also inspired by my two kids Elena and Rossi with Halloween being there absolute favorite holiday so I wanted to make the game about collecting candy and treats. A particular enemy was inspired by my daughter Elena who was 3 at the time I started making this game.

 I remember my daughter expressing a bit of concern about  bandits,  and was scared of the idea of a bandit going around stealing things. So I made the bandits in the games so she could zap away those candy stealing bandits. She has played the game does enjoy zapping those bandits.

Two player Co-op is something I wanted for the game. I never liked that in  a lot two players on the NES were often take turns. As a kid growing up with the NES and SNES and having siblings to play those with games I remember how awesome it was when you could play games that were simultaneous co-op, games like Contra and TMNT come to mind and are family favorites in my household. So I felt it was important to have that in this game.

That is all I'll write about for now. Later I plan on writing about the music for the game so stay tuned for that.

Tip for the Game:

1.) In the menu screen if you press select while the cursor is on "1-Player" or "1P-Continue" you can play the game as Jackolie(Jack o'lantern) you will see the cursor switch from a skull to a jack o'lantern.  In two player mode the second player is always Jackolie. The Demo does not have this feature.