Growing Pains by ctjet99
Become a person on a life journey to discover what life holds, made for LD39
Please play in its entirety
https://ctjet99.itch.io/growing-pains
We really enjoyed making this game!





Ratings
| Overall | 192th | 3.721⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 168th | 3.607⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 227th | 3.41⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 762th | 2.767⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 342th | 3.738⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 94th | 3.85⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 22th | 4.217⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 138th | 3.787⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 46🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
Congratulation guys, that's the kind of game that makes me wanna play more! Keep the good work
The game is still very good.
The concept of this game is too good!
Yeah, Growing Pains
I love when games use their controls as part of the story and this game did just that (reminded me of Brothers, if you're familiar with that game). Struggling early on as a sperm to control where you were going, then later mirroring that in the drive to work was great; driving your car seemed much easier but the message seemed to be that even as an adult we are just a small thing following a predetermined path. Then the walking, both as a child and when you're elderly, as the controls became more and more frustrating, just like the frustration one would feel as their body beings to fail them.
Graphics and music were great, the overall presentation here is very good for something made in such a short time. There was humor in there too with the peeing and yard defence sections. This could definitely be expanded upon, maybe including those awkward teenage years and some more use of "power" as an adult to tell a fuller story.
This was actually somewhat inspired from something that my grandpa said a long time ago, "one day I woke up, and I wasn't able to run anymore." It's a real thing that everyone has to deal with.
The controls are supposed to be tricky on all of the games. If you notice the command in the first walking scene, it says "learn to walk," and since most games are simply hold right to walk, I decided to change that. Doing this can help create a bond with the character, and as you notice from some of the comments above, it appeared to work.
To be honest, my team and I had no idea when we chose this game from our ideas list that it would turn out this good. All four of us had never participated in LD before, and only one of us had ever made a game that was released. We had planned for a lot more to be in but of course we barely made the cutoff point as it was. Thank you so much for enjoying this game!
SPOILER WARNING: the end is a fourth wall break where the character realizes that he never had control, all of his actions are pre-programmed. This is evidenced when the typed out text "maybe I never really did have power" changes to "but these people did have power" and rolls the credits. We had control over the entirety of the game, and you completing the game was planned by us. We controlled the entire experience and built that world from the ground up.
The character never had any power at all, he was controlled by you, and your experience, as stated, was controlled by us.
Overall it's a good game. Good job.
I had a fun time with this one, you got the humoristic aspects of growing up in the game well.
But it's really good game for game jam :)
Otherwise, I enjoyed it, good job!