Gl1tch



Gl1tch (also referred to as Glitch) is a 2D platformer developed by Pyro Enterprises based off of the Mega Man series. It is intended as a love letter to both the NES era and video gaming glitches in general, and is designed to make use of glitches that have appeared in famous retro games.

Story
The story begins on a stormy night with an adolescent girl playing a game on an NES. As she plays, her face becomes increasingly angrier until she finally throws the controller on the ground. She decides that she will give the level one more try, as she only has a single life remaining. The player is then introduced to the basic controls of the game via this level, which functions as a tutorial. However, no matter how far the player gets, they are forced to be gunned down by a sniper enemy near the level's end.

The girl, now introduced as Guri, becomes even more frustrated, claiming that the game is designed to be unbeatable, despite this level only being the third one. She suddenly gets a grin on her face as she unplugs the NES and takes it into her room.

The game then shows her plugging the NES into her desktop PC, claiming she is skilled enough at hacking the game that she can just edit her character's attributes to become veritably invincible. She begins inputting a code on the NES controller- however, as she does so, the thunderstorm picks up steam and gets worse, culminating in the house's wifi router being struck by lightning. A surge of energy courses through the PC, travelling through the NES into Guri's controller, shocking her into unconsciousness.

When Guri finally awakes, she has been transported into what appears to be a testing level for the game she was playing. Looking at herself, she nearly faints again on the discovery that she seems to have been transformed into raw data. Guri eventually deduces that her consciousness had been sent into the game via the lightning strike, becoming a strange hybrid of human intelligence and digital form. She then makes it her goal to make it through the game on her own, realizing that this digital form grants her the ability to manipulate the game itself.

Gameplay
Gameplay in Gl1tch is based off of the Mega Man series, being a 2D platformer with shooter elements. However, despite the game's focus on projectile combat, Guri herself is a melee-focused character, contrasting the rest of the game. The goal of each stage is to make it to the end and either collect the stage's Goal Flag or defeat the boss at the end of the stage.

Guri has three main abilities- Slash, Shoot, and Dash. Slash is a short-ranged melee attack that absorbs HP from enemies when hit, Shoot is a ranged projectile that uses some of Guri's HP upon use, and Dash is a charge attack that propels Guri forward. When certain enemies are struck with a dash, Guri will slam them into the ground, akin to Ganondorf's side special from Super Smash Bros., and absorb their data. This can either give her special attributes stolen from the enemy for a short time, or temporarily replace her Shoot ability with an enemy attack, which will also absorb HP like the Shoot command.