Garm by Lizzip

[raw]
made by Lizzip for LD26 (COMPO)
Roam around in the darkness eating food to stave off (or quicken) your demise. Survive as long as you can. If you see "Him" you lose 10 seconds, because he's just so damn scary!

Food spawns in sets of 10. 10 spawn, then when you eat all 10 a new set of 10 spawn in random places. Food is infinite.

Available on website http://magicsheepgames.co.uk/LD.html for download and gameplay/development videos.
Windows and source code both downloaded as a .zip or .rar
Source code is zipped/rar c# visual studio 2010 project

Current record I have seen so far is 290 - Feel free to post screen shots if you beat this


Fixed bugs:

- Food sometimes does not respawn (or 1 food spawns outside of map and is unreachable) *WORKAROUND* If you cannot find the last food item, press 'R' (only works if 1 item remains to be found of the set of 10)

- "Him" model does not draw, so he is invisible (maybe that's a super power?) *FIXED*

Ratings

Coolness 65% 3
Overall 2.56 1132
Audio 2.55 641
Fun 2.26 1141
Graphics 2.20 1159
Humor 2.00 714
Innovation 2.34 1068
Mood 2.79 639
Theme 3.09 956

Feedback

ashdnazg
29. Apr 2013 路 12:09 UTC
After a 120 seconds or so I ate all the food, and there was nothing left to interact with. The timer said I have 100 seconds to wait, so I just quit :S
馃帳 Lizzip
29. Apr 2013 路 13:13 UTC
That's annoying, thanks for bringing it to my attention. Food spawns in sets of 10, when you eat all 10 the next 10 appear and its infinite until time runs out. There's also a bug where "Him" is no longer drawn after ~150 seconds survived or so. I shall fix these and update later today
Cheshyr
29. Apr 2013 路 16:24 UTC
It would have been nice to have some indicator between positive food and negative food. Fun idea though.
Cirrial
29. Apr 2013 路 17:17 UTC
I agree with the previous comments on the lack of distinction between rotten and okay food.
@SamPotasz
29. Apr 2013 路 18:41 UTC
I kind of like the lack of distinction esp. as a minimalist meditation on the pointlesness of feedback, videogames, life, love, etc.
馃帳 Lizzip
29. Apr 2013 路 19:30 UTC
The two bugs mentioned above are fixed/poor workaround. If you cannot find the last food item of a set of 10 (i.e you've found 9 but cannot find the 10th, 19 but cannot find the 20th) press 'R' to spawn 10 new food items and remove the missing one.

In the context of this game it wouldn't make sense to make the good/bad food items distinguishable as this game is based on randomness. If you only got the good stuff you would have infinite time and wouldn't have respawning food. In this game it's your choice to eat the food in the hopes of elongating your time. But I do agree, in a more fleshed out game based on skill instead of randomness then food should be noticeably good or bad
rainblade studios
29. Apr 2013 路 20:00 UTC
Can't play, don't have windows :(
馃帳 Lizzip
29. Apr 2013 路 20:50 UTC
Sorry :( My next LD submission will hopefully be on web to stop OS dependencies
Egan
30. Apr 2013 路 02:13 UTC
Very interesting game. Enjoyed the mechanic that you can't see the world around you. Would have preferred a WASD control scheme than point and click but that is just me.

Great effort.
crneumre
30. Apr 2013 路 19:39 UTC
Good game,had fun playing it.
Awesome mood.
Gremlin
04. May 2013 路 14:47 UTC
Interesting. It seems like you were going for a survival or horror/suspense feel?

I didn't feel like I had too much control over planning my survival--my survival depended more on my ability to keep running. It's skill in execution rather than skill in strategy. I could see that part getting pushed a little further. If the running around was fine-tuned some more it could be a bleak little survival horror game.

The enemy/scary threat in the darkness is a little too arbitrary to be really scary. There are probably a bunch of different ways to help with that...maybe have the time-stealing happen after a moment, so the player has a split second to get further away? Probably lots of ways to do it.
MinionStudios
04. May 2013 路 18:37 UTC
I survived and missed item spawn three times! Interesting game!
HD408
06. May 2013 路 00:45 UTC
Tense feeling, and nice work with audio.

After you restart the game, it feels like you just continue the game with new time.
RawBits
17. May 2013 路 18:36 UTC
Minimalistic indeed.

I can't understand why one "food" gives 20 and others take away 10. And why that thing appears that take away seconds and how to counter.

Also never ever use installers for small games and the ones people only plays once! Very annoying!