...cos I am stuck at the god damn infinite crossroad.

I don't really have a proper way to start talking about my own game, so I think I'll try by telling you a rather morbid anecdote.

One of the very first dreams I recall ever having was of a kid disobeying their parent calling them back home. The kid instead runs off of the playground onto a crosswalk, only to be hit by a car.

And when I was a stupid little toddler, I was an uncontrollable ball of energy with a sense of adventure and a drive for exploration, I often tried running off from my mum who was reasonably afraid I'd get run over by a car or something...

...and that nearly happened once. But then I wouldn't be making this game - with a death scene involving being hit by a car - and writing about it two decades later now, would I?

...did you notice a pattern here?

So, yeah. Lonely Crossway is basically my artistic interpretation of that exact nightmare, except there's no knowing if there even IS the other side of the road, and you can actually play it now, if you'd want! From what I'm hearing, people who tried it seem to like this mess!

LD Page: https://ldj.am/$429572

itch.io: https://polyvishap.itch.io/ld59-lonely-crossway

!> Although, it's not just the possible reckless driver you will have to worry about...

How did this came to be?

I'll admit, I've had an idea for a similar project for a long time, but since I've been working on a bigger project I didn't know when I'll be able to work on that NOR did I know what it would have looked like - but sometimes, even into my young adulthood, I still feel that temptation to cross the road right as the signal is about to turn red... so instead of doing that in real life (cos I know that could end up getting me killed or give me permanent injuries), I thought turning that into a game sounded like a much better idea in my opinion.

But I ended up getting around to it when I learned that Ludum Dare 64 would be the last scheduled game jam - mind you, I never participated in L.D., but always wanted to! - and, initially planning on joining a later jam, but not doing so, cos I dunno when life would get in a way again, I joined this party instead, albeit fashionably later for the "Compo" part of it. Plus, I didn't want to lose a chance I already had! ~~Hesitation and procrastination can be punishing sometimes...~~

Also, by a huge coincidence, the theme was literally "Signal", so... I just had to make this idea PLAYABLE, okay???

Side-note: This is also my first time in 10 years joining another game jam!... which would make LD59 my second ever game jam I've been to, but... I am happy it's that. I don't know if I wanna share any specific details on that last thing, but I am proud to say that... yeah, I've definitely sharpened up my skills by a whole lot and got better with my game development tool choices... but I still kept a bad habit of rushing things when it's not necessary, cos I ended up rushing this right as the Submission Hour was closing down... not realizing that it was for the Compo submissions specifically -- the Jam itself was still ongoing for two more days-- in the retrospective, I am either stupid, or was too tired to notice the wording or understand what did Compo even mean--

I made this game in 12 hours. What the fuck.

~~did I mention this is my first Ludum Dare?~~

~~...and that I was finishing the game while pulling an all-nighter?~~

Right, so the next part of this post will mostly be technical nerd yapping bullshit, and it WILL spoil a bunch of stuff for you (not that it's got any story stuff), so, before you continue reading further, I'd suggest playing the game for yourself first!

It's one of those things that are best played for yourself in order to see what this mess is all about, because... how else am I supposed to talk about it?

So, yeah. You go play the game if you haven't already.

This post will wait.

The Making of this mess of a Thingamajigama.

Here's a bit of a fun fact here: I am typically a C#-nut, but this time I decided I wanted to code this game entirely in GDScript instead! Yes. It's a Godot game. I know, no need for applause or jeers, I am just a regular person like you - I put my pants on one nipple at a time and wipe my arse when I take an explosive shite.

To break my habit of doing complex things -- or, rather, to make sure I don't take too long -- I decided I wanted to make this game more simple to work with, and more importantly: simple to figure out and play!

And I did that by essentially... * ...integrating a relatively simple concept I am sure everyone knows by now, including their mums and grandpas, which is crossing the road when the pedestrian traffic lights are active! * ...and giving a universal control scheme anyone can easily memorize and work with, regardless of keyboard layouts. (which primarily consists of the arrow, Spacebar, and Shift keys.)

And I believe I did that relatively well enough that a lengthy tutorial isn't necessary; a small text popup refreshing you on the controls is enough to get you up to speed.

I mean, I dunno if you need a tutorial on how to cross the road... like, how else would you be safely getting to work? Or college? I mean, yeah, sure, you can drive there. But you'd either have to learn to get a driver's license or... still walk cos you'd be disembarking vehicles a lot anyway.

• ...but I also decided to make it into an "Endless Runner" type of a thing... although I purposefully have given the player more control over their blank avatar.
  • Yes, that means I made the level "infinite";
  • No, I don't think it counts as a "rogue-lite";
  • No, this is not an auto-runner either.

Building the Crossway...

The crosswalk is built out of four long (but relatively small) "chunks" - and if you're not familiar with world generation stuff ~~(I am not super familiar with it too, truth be told, and I am not gonna pretend like I am well-versed in that area either)~~, they're basically manageable pieces of a map that gets randomly generated! And I built them out of... * ...these three assembly parts that I have modeled out by hand! * ...at least one sidewalk (if you can call it that) "checkpoint" trigger. * ...and a traffic light (optional).

...and rather than bothering to do perlin noise... seed... stuff, I just have a chunk be randomly picked out of an array with minimum and maximum ranges being determined by the player score. (You may have definitely noticed that the distance between traffic lights have been getting... longer after your 5th or 10th!)

And you know how I casually mentioned chunks being manageable? The "checkpoints" basically do just that when the player leaves them: pushing all present chunks along the player back, asks the game round manager to check if there's any chunks out of distance (and if they are - the chunks get unloaded), while a new chunk is spawned in front of the player... so, that way, the game keeps about a maximum of five (5) chunks present in the game scene! And I think that's just neat, as simple as this specific system is.

So, you also may have noticed that there's a chance you'll be very far away from the next and last traffic light... and it gets harder to tell when its risky to make a mad dash for it. What exactly do you do here?!

Well... I got some... news.

...it's not just you - it IS getting louder here!!!

Are you familiar with the term - "Chekhov's Gun"? It is described to be a narrative principle emphasizing that every element in a story be necessary, while irrelevant elements should be removed.

!> Let's just say that this icon... is not really for show.

!> You probably might have missed THEM, but some of you may have already noticed THEM showing up out of the fog, charging towards YOU at a rapid pace. So, when THEY do that - THEY only do so when the traffic lights emit a "GO" signal. Otherwise, THEY would slowly creep up on you while you're not looking back.

!> So, if it's red - you and this mysterious character play a dangerous game of "Red Light and Green Light", while you yourself are waiting for an actual green light. When it's green - it's now a game of Tag. THEY are it.

!> But how, pray tell, do you tell when THEY show up? ...oh, it's only a matter of time after you already decide you wanna try see if there even IS another side to get across to.

So, that's all the technical crap I wanted to share! With how it all turned out, all within a span of 12 hours, mind you, I am... pretty happy with how this turned out...? But don't get me wrong, I still rushed it, so there's still some things that didn't make the final cut.

In Memoriam (what ideas were lost...)

* Alternative Traffic Light with a Crosswalk Button. I was going to include a second variant of traffic lights with a crosswalk button that could have helped speed up the waiting time, and I was also going to include a spam punishment which would make you wait twice as long next time the STOP signal is emitted, but... I gotta be real, I ended up forgetting about it and not implementing it, but honestly I think that was for the best, because after I first exported the game, I noticed a really annoying graphical bug where the base traffic light sprite isn't showing up (while it DID show up in the Debug playtest session within the engine)... so, it could have made it harder to tell what kind of a traffic light it is - or, rather, you wouldn't know there would be TYPES of traffic lights! ...so, really, that OpenGL specific bug relating to shaded sprites is a bit of a blessing in disguise as much as it is pissing me off. I could have just chosen to keep using the Forward+ renderer to remedy that, but I know there have been instances of Godot games not launching for some people, often because they haven't made sure their graphics card drivers are up to date to support the Vulkan graphics library or that... their graphics card even supports or has Vulkan support enabled at all... or that they don't know you can actually do that... plus, I also wanted to see if I could also do... * The (entirely 1:1) Web Version. Yeahhh, this was... actually pretty close to being an actual 1:1 thing, but... HOO BOY, the audio was SUPER FUCKING SCOFFED, and none of the real-time effects were working. I have not been able to figure out what to do about it, so, if it means saving you the trouble of going through ear piercing traffic light signal noises (I know they're not supposed to be THAT loud in-game!!!), I had to make the traffic lights stop making noises... which admittedly might make the game a little harder for some. Or challenging? Either way, as of April 28th 2026, an actual web version exists... but not the kind that I've been wanting to have, so... I still recommend that you play the desktop builds for the intended experience. * Footsteps, actual main menu, an option to toggle Fullscreen... yeah, I didn't get to add that after I decided I was gonna wrap up development on the game in a heat of a rush moment. So, I just said "fuck it, maybe next time. lol".

Now, I could potentially re-add all those in a post-jam version of the game, but I will be frank with you - I don't know WHEN it is gonna happen, and IF I will ever feel like making something like that, but... never saying never in this case, although I'm usually wrapped up with another bigger thing... again - never saying never!

So uh... yeah! That's Lonely Crossway!

Really hope you liked the game, I hope you found this... somewhat interesting to read... and... yeah! I'll be off to my own devices while also checking out other game jam games on here!

See ya!

UPDATE: Screw it. It's up.

~~I still can't narrow down what to do about the audio issue I've been dealing with, so uh~~

~~Do I just release the web build without the traffic light noises? Though, it's gonna make the game harder than intended, cos...~~

!> ~~The traffic lights drift further apart the further you get into the game session...~~

Oh!

...so it's over? The ratings are in now? I wonder what's the ratings are like on mine--

OH--!!! ...you know, I'll be completely honest with you - since Lonely Crossway has basically been a rushjob pushed out of a constipated arsehole over the course of 12 hours (...out of provided 72) - I was expecting it to do much worse than that! But even the current rating standing feels a bit... too generous, given the quality of the final thing? 😅

Don't get me wrong, I am extremely grateful for everyone who's taken their time to at least give it a chance, rate it and comment! I really don't know how to express that very well. But if you're curious about the thought process that went into making this... thing... I wrote about it, actually!

Like, genuinely - to those who played the game, rated it and commented - I thank you so, so much for giving that a shot, disregarding its incredibly rushed quality!!! 🙇🙇🙇

So, now what? What's the future of Lonely Crossway looking like?

I am gonna be completely honest with you, I am still not really sure when I will ever revisit this game. I don't know if I'll ever do an update, or give it a much proper treatment it deserves, but whenever that happens, I am sure it will be a fun thing to revisit again at some point! It was a really cool idea on paper, though I wish I didn't fucking rush it the way I did. Like, frankly I don't even feel like fixing this mess at its current state... and I would rather redo a lot of things from scratch cos I might completely reimagine the whole fucking thing anyway, so... maybe in the distant unknown future? But definitely not any time soon.

If something ever comes up, I will be posting about it on here, my Mastodon, my personal BlueSky profile, and probably the one production oriented BlueSky profile of mine I'll most likely lazily repost aforementioned stuff off of my personal profile...

...but it's not to say that I won't be working on anything at all after this in the meantime! As a matter of fact, I've been working on something... for admittedly a very long time now, but, frankly, I feel really terrible about plugging this, especially since it's not... a Ludum Dare related thing.

Oh, hell, what's this?

I am not really sure how else exactly I can pitch my current main project, Ormagi Press, as it's one of those things you'll definitely have to experience for yourself to get what it's supposed to be... but if you ever wanna feel like digging deep into someone's brain to uncover memories of a traumatic past to tie together a messy interconnected story, then... this might be something of interest!

...and you can also wishlist Ormagi Press on Steam.

...and unlike Lonely Crossway, I will be taking a very long time to ensure it's at least somewhat decent.

...so, yeah. I guess that's it.

Unless if something really gets in the way, I am really looking forward to return to at least another of the remaining 5 Ludum Dare game jams! It's been really fun!!!

So until then - take care, see ya', toodle-o, and uh... just be safe!

Oh yeah, and shoutout-thanks, cos, yeah.

This is a bit of a post-script, but I really wanna give my huge thanks to @theoratkin for being the first to spot a Linux specific thing I was able to patch out real quick (hehehe).

I also wanna give another huge thanks to @tanjou for providing me with a few pointers on making the experimental Mac build of Lonely Crossway even remotely possible! By the way, at least the LD59 game they worked on is being polished up for a Steam release, so, check their game out and wishlist that as well!

...while I have to wait for it to show up on my end, cos I feel they forgot to do some mature content survey stuff that lock the steam game out of certain regions if not filled out... which is always "fun".

and extra thanks to @frowsyfrog, @bambutcher, @sebastian-fuehr, @neowhoru, @ugly-robot, @evil-gaufre, @hammy275, @emmma, @daliamha, @uroborei, @memoloop, @denikk, @peak-vinnie, @plutonicrock, @letssnack, @geraldfingburke, @benjaminm, @remusnomos for the nice comments and feedback

and especially @sebbot for giving a surprisingly long and detailed one.

...I genuinely feel bad I have given a pathetically shorter comment on the game they worked on, because - holy shit.

How do I even respond to that?

(seriously, it means a lot, and uh - thanks for checking out this piece of crap. really appreciate it.)

((so ye, for real this time - goo bees))