Garbage collector's minion by Mibi88
A small game where you are an allocator and the garbage collector asks you to perform some tasks. Made for the Ludum Dare 58 (jam category).
I had way less time this time as I nearly forgot the Ludum Dare! I noticed it at 1pm on Saturday!
~~A Linux build is here, and web and Windows builds are coming soon.~~
EDIT: I just made a Windows build on my school laptop, it's crazy how many DLLs the SDL requires.
EDIT2: The web build is here!
~~A timelapse is also coming soon, I just need to find the time to put it together… Which isn't easy…~~
EDIT3: It's finally done!
I opted out of audio as my game simply has no audio at all.
How to play
(this help can also be seen in-game)
Known bugs
Resizing the window is kinda broken on X.Org (however it works on Wayland and on Windows), so it's probably SDL's fault.
Changes
11th October 2025: Made a web build of the game (required fixing the size of some textures to make them power of two sized and square). I didn't updated the other builds.
Timelapse
https://youtu.be/yUBdYKr2OOI
| Link | https://github.com/mibi88/ld58 |
| itch.io | https://mibi88.itch.io/garbage-collectors-minion |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/garbage-collectors-minion |
Ratings
| Overall | 694th | 2.981⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 694th | 2.731⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 172th | 3.635⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 552th | 3.385⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 695th | 2.481⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 592th | 2.435⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 759th | 2.442⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 18🗳️ | 28🗨️ |
Perhaps the web build will be good enough for me to try again :slight_smile:
They aren't completely, but it's really hard to try to fix.
Thanks for your comment.
I just added a Windows build.
I can't write more, I have very little time.
> I tried running on Linux, but I’m hitting a dependency missing error
Yes you need to install SDL_image.
> They aren’t completely, but it’s really hard to try to fix.
My code to find the tasks is really messy, I should've taken another approach. I had less time than the other times I participated to the Ludum Dare, and I tried to make it less random in the last minute, but the whole logic of it is bad.
I'm happy that you enjoyed playing it!
Garbage collector was one of the first thing came to my mind but I didn't know what to do with it.
So I am glad to see someone else choose the theme and make a good simple game.
I did get hung up on the 3-region level, where the lag shot past my ability to click fast enough. I think with a little balancing and sound effects this could be really great.
Good concept, control scheme, and gameplay loop!
> Got the end, yey. Garbage collector was one of the first thing came to my mind but I didn’t know what to do with it. So I am glad to see someone else choose the theme and make a good simple game.
Funny coincidence.
> I did get hung up on the 3-region level, where the lag shot past my ability to click fast enough. I think with a little balancing and sound effects this could be really great.
Yes, I know it is quite unbalanced, especially with the number of actions that need to be done and the speed. The latter is hard to make balanced as I got too used to the speed of it :joy: .
Watching you build the code for this was crazy impressive though. :raised_hands: And I loved how snappy and streamlined it all felt.
> In the final levels I thought you’re supposed to allocate in different regions
No you aren't tasked to allocate in the first region, you can choose what's the best. When reallocating it only tells you where it currently is.
> Also, I thought you’re not supposed to overwrite already allocated memory with resizes, but looks like that wasn’t punished.
You are punished: it increases the chance that you may loose (it's random), i.e. it increases the chance of a "crash". Failing allocations also increase the chance of a "crash".
But I liked the overall concept of the game. Good Job!
> Like some indication as to why I died or how the crash chance is increasing.
Yes I should have added a message telling one why they failed.
Was fun allocating some blocks :D
Anyway great game! It makes so much sense that this game is written in C too haha!
Edit: I managed to play it, but it was me. I don't understand the game. :sweat:
Thanks for all your feedback!
@ueighti,
The "HELP" menu only shows images that describe the different tasks etc. It doesn't show steps: it just explains what the different things on screen do and isn't interactive.
> I tried the web version on Itch.io, but the screens are different from the tutorial, so I couldn’t follow the steps.
Could you send a screenshot?
Was fun, would have loved any type of sound effects though to add to the experience!
Thanks for all your feedback!
> I was confused how I ended up winning past the 5th round. I enjoy learning on my own by failing and trying again, but this felt a bit too complicated to just figure out by playing.
Yes, the end is quite unbalanced, I should have made it a little bit more progressive.
> Was fun, would have loved any type of sound effects though to add to the experience!
True, they would have made it even more polished, but I was a bit short on time so I preferred improving the UI by e.g., animating the text showing the tasks, as I discovered that before, when letting others play my game that it sometimes really wasn't obvious that there was a new task, when e.g., the game asks you twice in a row to allocate 1 block. I also used this time to fix some bugs, there were surprisingly many. It can be seen in my timelapse.
Thanks for your feedback!
> the web version was a bit buggy for me
What kind of bug was there? Was the clicking not working (it's an issue I had previously with the full screen button on itch.io preventing clicking on the canvas)?
EDIT:
Oh, I just noticed that the UI is a bit cramped when not playing in full screen so I made it bigger by default when not being in full screen.
I'm happy that you enjoyed playing it!
> It took me a while to understand what to do.
That got mentioned very often, I'll need to see how that can be done better to not have a similar problem next time.