Description

Lights Out is a game about a heroic peon at an unnamed electrical conglomerate! The countryside has experienced a major power outage, and it’s up to you to re-wire the grid and restore power.

The game is essentially a basic math puzzle combined with a “pipes” style grid. You install and remove power lines and resistor towers to make sure the houses get the correct amount of power.

Controls

Mouse only. Select a tool using the bar at the bottom of the screen, click on the grid to place it. Click on an existing piece of hardware to remove it.

Goals

I wanted to make something simple and polished, or, as polished as a Comp entry can be. During my last LudumDare, I overshot and ended up producing little more than a tech demo with some minor humor. This time around I wanted to make sure I actually built something I could call a “game”.

It may not be the most imaginative or complex thing in the world, but it feels significantly more refined than my last entry.

Issues

Untested in Firefox, please use a WebKit or Blink based browser for now. Chrome recommended.

In some cases a power line can be placed in a three-way connection with two generators and a resistor. This often makes it look like the lines are leading to the resistor, but are actually ignoring it.

Linking a resistor in a loop to another resistor causes a power drain and drops them both to 0.

Tools

Game written entirely in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Graphic work was done in Photoshop and processed through CodeKit 3. Music was generated with WolframTones. Sound effects generated with Bfxr.

Screenshot