Shadow King
The Shadow King has invaded the castle belonging to the Knights of Valor and they need your help to get it back! Explore the massive castle in this metroidvania and help the fallen knights back to their former glory! Upgrade your moves and weapons along the way as you fight minions, defeat bosses, find secrets, and unravel what has happened.
Subscribe to my Patreon for more games like this, but cheaper!
Features
- A huge map with graphically unique areas!
- A cast of different enemies!
- Fun platforming all around!
- Boss fights and secret rooms!
- Beautiful and engaging soundtrack !
Controls
- move - ⬅️➡️
- jump - ❎
- attack - ⓩ
- drop down from platform - ❎+⬇️
- talk / enter doors - ⬆️
Credits
Design/Art/Code: Johan Peitz (@johanpeitz)
Music/Sound: Bibiki (@bibikigarcia)
Promo art: Jon Nielsen (@encifer)
Many thanks to my supporters on Patreon for making it possible to keep making games like this. Subscribers get each game cheaper as soon as it is out (plus source code, early access, and all that jazz)!
Stay in touch
- Join for free on Patreon for devlogs and behind the scenes!
- Sign up for my newsletter to get the latest info first!
- Follow me on twitter/X for daily updates!
- Join our discord and hang out with other fans!
Notes
- The pico-8 png cart that is included with the purchase is minified in order to fit on a single cart. Doesn't affect how it is played, but the source is unreadable.
- The pico-8 png cart made for running on pico-8 installs. Your milage on emulators may vary.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4.95 USD. Your purchase comes with a Steam key. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- New art!81 days ago
- Shadow King on SteamJun 12, 2024
- The Shadow King has been released!Sep 16, 2023
Comments
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fantastic! along with the usual upgrades you find in search - action games, i love the powerups that are exclusive to this game. medium challenge, which i love! really great balance for a fun lil' time. been looking forward to this and not at all disappointed!
Thanks! Happy to hear you liked it so much!
when attempting to run cart on batocera i get error
[String "--the shadow king..."]:5b: Attempt to call global 'spr' (a number value)
Maybe already know but thought I should post JIC
Great game!
Thanks!
You need a true pico8 build to run it on. Emulators won't work.
Can't I play Hellgineers on Pico-8?not all the games in the bundle are pico8 games, right?Oh I got it. Sorry bruh. .p8 file is not provided, right?
On some games it is, on some it isn’t.
If it is, it is listed with the other downloads
But there is no pico-8 on Hellgineers page.
There are only for 4 platforms.
Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry PI.
https://johanpeitz.itch.io/hellgineers
Hellgineers 1.3, Windows1,000 kB
Hellgineers 1.3, Mac3 MB
Hellgineers 1.3, Linux757 kB
Hellgineers 1.3, Raspberry PI (unsupported)2 MB
that is correct, the p8 file is not available for each title
Hello. Mr. Johan. I bought your bundle and enjoyed games. You are a certain genious game developer. Thank you man. But isn't Hellgineers a pico-8 game?
thanks for the kind words. All the games in the bundle are pico8 games! 😊
This game looks awesome. Any way of putting this on Analogue Pocket? I can play on my Steam Deck, but I think this would look splendid on the Pocket.
Thanks! Don't know much about the Analogue Pocket - what does it need to be able to run the game? Is it raspberry pi based?
It is an FPGA console. I doubt it could run it, though. I might just get it on Steam Deck instead or play pico-8 on Vita. How long is the game, roughly? Great work.
My guess it takes somewhere btw 30 to 60 minutes? Unless you really rush it
Gives me celeste vibes
Great game
Loving it, especially the hidden room!
It perfect for my Gameforce Chi.
Thanks! Glad to hear it
lovey made!
Got into Pico-8 thanks to RetroGameCorps. Found this game and bought it to play on my RGB30. Just finished my first playthrough with six hearts. Awesome little bite-sized metroidvania. The difficulty level felt just right.
hi johan i'm loving the game mate, just one criticism though? it wasn't clear how to save the game and as such i thought it was an autosave and when i quit i lost all my progress. i have now found out that you save by quitting on top of the 'checkpoint's in the game
Hi there! That's odd! The game saves automatically as soon as you pass checkpoint. You shouldn't have to do anything else at all. What platform are you playing on?
So I got as far as getting 2 of the orbs and the boomarang and then called it a night, pretty sure i closed it down with quit from the menu. then i loaded it up again to see if it said 'continue' as i did look briefly at someones playthrough, cos i was stuck, and their vid showed 'continue' or 'new game', but mine only showed new game? i started again and tried quitting on the room with the checkpoint. then i had a save game.
if i had have just closed the window down with 'x' should it still have gone to the last checkpoint as a continue?
You don't need to close it in any specific way, is saves automatically when you pass a check point.
ok, maybe it was just that first time and something to do with comodo antivirus as i had to tell it not to isolate it again? i'll keep my eye on it..
yeah i think it was just that, it saved fine every time last night, back up to where i was again.
i've got a project on my profile called CollidEscape. it's a twin stick shooter made with SHMUP CREATOR and has hand drawn graphics using felt tip pins. i would love it if you can try it out for me sometime and give me some feedback, it's my first game! oh, the music is also mine
Finished it the other night, shorter than i thought, but very enjoyable!
Well done Johan!
oh sorry, just a win 10 pc mate
hi, i'm a bit new to this but your game looks great so, is it a stand alone game or do i need to buy and install this pico-8 thingy first please
Hi!
No need to own pico-8. Totally stand-alone!
Great Johan!
One More question, can i use an xbox one controller?
yes, shouldn’t be a problem !
in that case, consider it a done deal
Just beat this on steam, great game. Really impressive work given the pico 8 restrictions. I love all of the little VFX when you do things like dash, ground-pound, jump, etc. The game oozes polish.
Also loved the level design. I really appreciated how nonlinear the ‘collect 3 orbs’ section felt, though I can’t actually remember if there was an explicit ordering to it based on powerups. Maybe it had ‘nonlinear vibes’ haha! Nice job, your pico 8 games are always an inspiration.
Thank you for your kind words!
Just completed this little gem. Absolutely brilliant. Got that Shovel Knight/Zelda/Metroidvania feel perfectly.
glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the feedback!
Gonna buy it for my dad's birthday. He's really into platformers so seems like he would enjoy this.
awesome! Let me know what he thinks!
This is fantastic! I'm super super stuck after hearing about needing 3 orbs to unlock a gate, hoping to get past this next section.. How long is the game currently?
probably around an hour the first time? You can probably speedrun it in 15mins though
glad you like it!
I want to purchase this but before I do, may I ask how long does it take to beat the game? :)
not working on FAKE-08 :(. can you provide a split on multiple carts, maybe it will work?
That is unfortunately a known issue with FAKE-08 that it is unable to handle some of the latest pico-8 features (or how developers use them). The only thing that is minified is the code so splitting it unto several carts won't help as fake-08 will have the same issues.
I would like to buy it very much but I can't :(
wow id buy it and TAS it
please do! There’s been some speed running discussions on twitter already!
Hello, this might be an odd question, but do you have a public email that I can contact you with?
check apskeppet.se
fantastic game, won it from a giveaway done by pico-8 gamer
no criticisms here, except maybe the final boss was a tad long, super fun throughout, very short n' sweet
Awesome game!
Thank you!
Just purchased it! I can't wait to play it!
Woop woop - enjoy!
Nice little game. Unfortunately I didn't end up beating it because (I believe) I got softlocked. The room featured in the second itch.io gif has the left entrance blocked (and I am to the left of it). I believe this happened because in a later room I was inside of a toggle block as it toggled, and it clipped me through the floor.
Thanks! If you go back to the beginning (third room?) there is a blue crystal you can hit which should toggle the blocks back.
I see, thanks! Since the one in the orb gate room didn't seem to be global I assumed the rest weren't either.
Looks like a dope platformer!
Thanks, I believe it is!
[Playthrough removed]
I assumed I couldn't get through the vertical green room due to the mud (and needed something for it), so I spent what felt like 15 minutes seeing if there was some jumping technique to reach a switch that eventually needed the boomerang.
hey! Thanks, it was enlightening to watch! Can I ask you to remove the video? I’d rather not have full play thoughts on this page. Thanks!
Just finished playing your game and thought it was very good it's the best PICO-8 metrodavania I have played and believe and have played plenty. I'm trying to make a metrodavania myself in PICO-8 and I was wondering how were you able to use the entire spritesheet and mapsheet because for me if I fill up the entire spritesheet it also fills up half the mapsheet. If you could respond that would be very helpfull and I'd be forever thankfull.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I wore a custom map editor to the game that uses compression routines to pack map data at approx 3x. When playing the data is unpacked to ram and used as the map
very nice!!!
A classic MetroidVania with cute graphics and a good level design.
I was hoping that the final boss was a bit more challenging, but for the rest everything was great. BTW It was really a pleasure play it.
glad you enjoyed it!
Did you find all 8 hearts?
8?? I have only five hearts! Wow, a new reason to replay the game :D
can i ask how long it took to make
Of course - but my answer won't be very precise as I took some breaks during parts of the development. :)
All in all my guess is something between 6 and 10 weeks perhaps?
Excellent work! Great progression through backtracking familiar environments with new skills.
Thanks you so much Ben! Happy to hear the level design is paying off!
This looks adorable! <3
Thanks you!