Sleepy Orphan Simulator by Barney Cumming

[raw]
made by Barney Cumming for LD 39 (JAM)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Fqis9nTM0

cap4.gif

You're running out of power and about to go to sleep, but maybe you can win the heart of a loving family before sleep takes you? Or just eat a box?

Made by * Barney Cumming (@Powerhoof)

Controls * (Ctrl + Arrow keys) Select body part * Arrow Keys Move selected body part * Space Jump, grab, eat (depending on body part) * Up arrow Be charming (only when you have head selected) * - * (note) Charming face + moving/jumping about impresses the adults!

Download * * *(Win) https://powerhoof.itch.io/sleepy-orphan-simulator

Ratings

Overall 5th 4.444⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Fun 38th 4.044⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 7th 4.489⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Theme 46th 4.178⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 27th 4.6⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Audio 23th 4.222⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Humor 15th 4.295⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Mood 26th 4.238⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Given 48🗳️ 1🗨️

Feedback

Askbackwards768
31. Jul 2017 · 18:58 UTC
Very well done, tons of fun! Looks and feels really polished for a LDJ game!
MrSerp
31. Jul 2017 · 23:15 UTC
Couldn't figure out how to get the hotdog in my mouth, but the audio and graphics alone make this a stand out entry.
ghust1995
01. Aug 2017 · 04:26 UTC
This game is so good, its hard to believe it's a jam thing, the sound design is super nice, the mechanics and idea feel super well thought. Very nice job, thanks for the game =)
sanjeev
01. Aug 2017 · 06:51 UTC
Amazing audio and mood, it is quite unsettling. The controls felt a little clumsy at first but got used to it after a while and it feels satisfying when you do finally get a handle on the controls. The difficulty was just right, but sometimes it did feel like the energy was draining too quickly. Overall a seriously amazing piece of work; love that audio.
WalterP
01. Aug 2017 · 06:53 UTC
Wow this was amazing! Great sound design, with all the whispers and dialogue. Love the menu button when you escape "Abondon boy?" Solid game, Keep up the good work guys!
MajamiLTU
01. Aug 2017 · 14:51 UTC
Very cool game, amazing graphics, good voice acting, unique idea, love it!
kali-mccord
02. Aug 2017 · 01:05 UTC
This game was such a funny take on the theme, I loved it. I loved the lazy swinging of his arms as you run, it really added to the "running out of power aspect". The one qualm I had was with the soundtrack, I was not the biggest fan of the spooky whispering but that may be just me!
emmelineprufrock
02. Aug 2017 · 03:23 UTC
Lovely as always
RockhopperGames
02. Aug 2017 · 05:46 UTC
Top work! It's rare to find a game that hits so many notes when it comes to humour. Such a solidly designed game is a pleasant surprise in a jam!
Spice135
02. Aug 2017 · 08:23 UTC
Nice game! Had some fun playing it :)
duskpn
02. Aug 2017 · 08:36 UTC
Amazing! Great graphics, great sound design, creative gameplay and awesome mood overall!

My only complaint is that I'm too stupid to beat it =p
undi
02. Aug 2017 · 09:08 UTC
The polishing on this game, man!!

Marvelous thematically, innovative, incredible animations and sound design, and very balanced difficulty. Solid 5 stars.
AJ Weeks
02. Aug 2017 · 09:11 UTC
Very neat concept, executed very well too! Easy to learn, but challenging enough to keep my attention for a while. Great work :)
Remzo
02. Aug 2017 · 09:46 UTC
I've never had so much fun *in an orphanage*! Controls were surprisingly easy to grasp and the jelly physics were really nicely executed. Jumping sometimes got stuck on platform corners causing me to lose too much energy but otherwise fun game!
krunoslav
02. Aug 2017 · 10:09 UTC
Very nice game! I loved the controls! Level design is very well done too, even first level you have to think a little. Third level I could not win.

EDIT: looking at the video that you put i realized that you can eat the bricks :P
Damoy
02. Aug 2017 · 10:11 UTC
Very strong game ! Enjoyed it, all was good, congratz !
Jolix
02. Aug 2017 · 10:15 UTC
Best game I've played this ludum dare! The polish, the atmosphere, the sound effects, the humor. Just wow. Did you sleep this weekend?
stupidpawn
02. Aug 2017 · 10:25 UTC
Really interesting game. The graphics looked nice, and the mood is amazing. It is quite hard too move, but then again is the challenge of this game. I think this game would work better with a controller, one stick for movement and the other stick for selecting what part has too move. Overall I really enjoyed your game!
earthexe
02. Aug 2017 · 23:20 UTC
You really nailed the aesthetic; I knew this was a good game the moment I realized that the solution to one of the puzzles was to eat the cinder block. My only complaint is that the puzzles are a little too exact as to what they want you to do most of the time.
NueboMundo
03. Aug 2017 · 05:17 UTC
What a creative entry!

The dynamic movement of the child and the interaction with the items really raises the fun factor (and quirkiness) of this game to the next level. Just that was enought for me to know I was playing one of the best games of the jam.
Junber
03. Aug 2017 · 11:38 UTC
Amazing game! Visuals and audio are awesome, really polished and just ooze with personality. Just moving around is incredibly fun and even though some levels were hard to a degree that would be frustrating in a lesser game, I never wanted to stop playing not even when the game was over (though I only managed to get 5 adults to want to adopt me and have no idea how it's possible to get the other one in the last level). I have a hard time believing that a single person made this in 3 days.
🎤 Barney Cumming
03. Aug 2017 · 12:03 UTC
Thanks so much for the encouragement, so stoked to have people playing my silly game! I was very worried it would be too hard to explain the controls and people would give up before they got the hang of it!!

@junber so great to hear you played it through and won over all but 1 adult! I was worried people wouldn't get the hang of charming them as i didn't tutorialize it very well- didn't really explain how you have to move about and be in the right proximity etc.

As for getting it done in 3 days, it was a very close call haha :) The cutoff time here (Australia) was 11am Tuesday morning, and I didn't get the mechanics/art done to start making levels til 10pm Monday night! I was up til 4am making levels, then went to bed for 3 hours til my girlfriend had to get up for work at 7, when I got back up to record sound effects! Really the thing that saved me was doing the environments all in flat color silhouette, so I could make new levels with no new art, just moving and scaling around more grey collision rectangles!

Very happy it all came together in the end and I didn't miss any major elements. Probably the biggest things I missed were doing animation on the boys legs, and having some kind of propper scene when you finish the game... it was so late and I was so tired by then I just grabbed a bunch of the food and put it up in the sky so it would fall on you hahah but not much of a finale really! I had big dreams of having different story scenes depending on how many adults you won over etc but it was not to be! I would have loved some special "end of the game" fun music for that final level too, as contrast from the background sounds of the rest of the game :)
Skydsgaard
03. Aug 2017 · 14:01 UTC
Great work, as always! I didn't know that you had code powers too O_O
everythingWasBees
03. Aug 2017 · 19:09 UTC
This game is truly remarkable. The graphics are fantastically done, if disturbing, and the soundscape is actually haunting and I love every bit of it. I'm not the biggest fan of using control+the arrow keys to switch between body parts, and would've rather it was mapped to different letter keys instead, but the actual gameplay is wonderful. I was frequently running into issues where I'd have tangled my boy's arms all up in knots, but rather than being frustrated, I enjoyed the difficulty that it added.

You did so many cool things, I'm probably gonna dive into the code to see how you did it. Very well done!
Yetman
03. Aug 2017 · 22:15 UTC
That was perfect. The mood was comical and disturbing at the same time. My only criticism is that the color of the platforms are hard to see in some areas so more contrast would help IMO.
Gumboot
04. Aug 2017 · 00:37 UTC
after getting used to the controls this was a blast! Was very disturbed by the music for sure haha, definitely felt very uncomfortable while listening to it. The art is so lovable and contrasts with the bleakness of the situation in a very interesting way. So cool!
Peter Sheehan
04. Aug 2017 · 08:06 UTC
Holy crap, these graphics are the best ones I've seen for the entire jam. The colors, the expressions, everything looked great. The audio was super creepy and added to the atmosphere, but honestly, I was kind of confused by why it was needed besides just being weird with all the licking and squirting and repetition of "You're in an Orphanage." I thought for sure some heavy stuff was going to happen, but the gameplay and the story really didn't feel all that hopeless (quite the opposite, it was hilarious). But the audio, idk if it was just getting a little too much, not really hitting the funny like the rest of the game was. However, besides the audio, the gameplay was stellar. I found the game to get pretty difficult at points, especially when I didn't know I could eat bricks. Surprising, but I wouldn't have known if I hadn't watched the video.
Honestly, I am blown away by the polish on this and give you two giant thumbs up. Awesome work.
rotblade
08. Aug 2017 · 05:29 UTC
the controls need a little bit time to get familiar with but the concept is perfect, one thing I would like to ask is did the creator sing the bgm?
Fran Segura
08. Aug 2017 · 18:37 UTC
Woah, this is so damn great on every level! A perfect score without any doubt, had a blast with it. The only thing I didn't get is where the action takes place.
jaimuepe
08. Aug 2017 · 20:35 UTC
Awesome game :) loved the graphics and the music/sound effects. The way the character moves is pretty funny, and also he can eat bricks, that's always a plus. Good job!
🎤 Barney Cumming
15. Aug 2017 · 06:12 UTC
Thanks again everyone :)

@Skydsgaard - I'm pretty keen on learning to code, at least enough to aid design/prototyping/technical art etc! It all had to fall by the wayside while we were chasing deadlines for Crawl, so it has been great to get stuck into it again since launch- LD was at a perfect opportunity to test out the stuff I've been learning :)

@everythingWasBees - I know what you mean about the controls- I did initially have W,A,S and D mapped to the body parts, but something about switching and moving on separate hands wound up confusing me all the time! Definitely will be fun to experiment a bit more with control schemes now the time pressure is off- it would be cool to work multiple body parts at once as long as it didn't get too confusing.

@Yetman - Thanks so much :) definitely a good point about the platforms! As they get higher on the screen they get less and less contrast against the background gradient... I imagine people with even slightly less screen contrast than me might not be able to see them at all- oops!

@Gumboot - So good to hear! To be honest, there was about a 95% chance I'd get caught up on some unsolvable physics bug for half a day and never get the game done in time- very lucky the Unity physics gods were behaving at least for 72 hours!

@peter-sheehan - Stoked with that feedback dude :) definitely the music is the main thing I've had complaints about. At 3am it seemed like a totally hilarious idea to just record myself saying orphanage over and over, but it's definitely a bit of a weird joke that misses for a lot of people! I think a big part of what's funny on my end is just that it's my dumb voice, which of course doesn't translate so well haha!

@rotblade - I wouldn't call it singing hehe but it is my voice saying orphanage :) It's slowed down a bit too.

@Fran Segura - lol if I could like that comment twice I would :) sorry for leaving the setting so ambiguous! hehe

@jaimuepe - hehe thanks! Definitely "character able to eat bricks" would be a selling point for me if I saw it on the back of a game box :)
Belga54
15. Aug 2017 · 14:47 UTC
You are the creators of "The Maitre D'" for the LudumDare 35, the creators of Crawl also. These games was funny like this one ! You have so funnny ideas ! The art of Barney is as usual fan-tas-tic, the sound effects and the background music that was sooo creepy. One of the best games of this jam ! The first game that got from me 5/5 at overall ! I think this game is going to win the jam like "The Maitre D' " did ! Congrats. Perfecto !
Ferran Benavente
17. Aug 2017 · 13:15 UTC
Amazing game!
Full of surprising details. It amazes me how it can be so fun, adorable and creepy at the same time.
Loved the art style, well done sound effects that really set the mood and one of the best ideas I've seen in this jam.
Congratulations!! :D
Franklins Ghost
19. Aug 2017 · 13:54 UTC
My favourite entry so far, loved it. Thought it was so humorous and such a unique take on the theme. Also extremely polished and has so much depth for what at first just seems like something funny. Loved the charming challenge to the adults thought that was well done and the control of the different body parts was great. So much fun to just play around and see how the little guy would move. Great job so good.
buttonmasherbros
04. Sep 2017 · 16:09 UTC
You've been featured on Ludum Dare to Believe! Check it out here! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wV4msI8xzs
giraffesareburning
05. Sep 2017 · 03:51 UTC
Really cool style and fun controls - the background audio killed it for me though.