Dying

Concept in Short:

A simple platformer, with strong, cryptic themes about life, death, and the scars it leaves. Gameplay mechanics enhance these themes and make for a unique experience, hinting at the secrets of the world and the meanings behind it. The world itself is dangerous, one of the themes is surviving a violent and unfair place. After facing it all, what will your ending be?

The game features two endings.

Game Hook/Beginning:

You start out in an ordinary bedroom. A cute, doughy looking character. Your brother, a similar creature, is asleep in your bed, as he always is. Eventually, there is a knock at your door. As you walk over to answer, the knock comes again, much stronger than the first time. It sounds… violent.

The knocking becomes more like a ramming of your door, the door creaking, bulging, and finally cracking with the strain. The whole room shakes with the force of your visitor.

The door crashes to the floor, a hanging lamp falling with it; leaving you half-blind. Lightning flashes, as if to reveal your attacker… but nothing is there. Only yourself, the pink wallpaper of your room, and your once-comforting fixtures. There is also the now-broken door, but there's nothing there or through it. Only the pitch blackness.

When you dare to move, or if you wait too long, you topple to the ground, as if something has your leg. Tapping Z rapidly, you attempt to cling to the carpet for dear life. Your brother is pulled out of bed, flying past you and out the door. You soon follow. Catching onto each side of the door-frame, you barely resist the pull. The doorway shatters, a great fissure splitting the wall and cracking the window above the door, and you fall away.

When you awake, you are inside an old, ruined place, a place of decorated stone. And now… you begin the game.

Credits

Writing, Coding, Producing, Direction, Worrying, Design, Slave-driving, Level Design, Marketing, Cutscene Design, Design Design, Writing the Credits, Voice Acting (there isn't any), Self Promoting, Handling of Lawsuits:

Mask:
I've never really coded before this. At the start, I was near ready to give up on the project, because I couldn't work out how to make the player go to the next room. I'm glad I didn't.

This game was made with GameMaker8.1, and the YaruPlatEngine extension. Special thanks to my friends Endil the Wayfarer, Vertti "LoHii" Viitanen, and to the GameMaker community, who gave me coding advice and answered my questions.

Art

Stewartisme @stewartisme42 , who did the characters, logo, and more.
I think Max Keeble's Big Move is a good movie but I haven't seen it since I was a kid so my opinion might be inaccurate. Go back and watch films you loved as a kid and judge them as they are now, not only as you remember them.

Also making the sprites for this was pretty fun.

Rageless, who made all the tiles, backgrounds, and objects in the game. You can contact him on twitter: https://twitter.com/Rage_N_Tonic . Or Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/login?redirect_to=/blog%2...

And Mr. Mask helped a little:
Very little, I tweaked like, four sprites. Though I did get to animate the blood and expression on a certain sprite.

Sound

Music and SFX by Tetra
https://soundcloud.com/tetranoise

Two SFX from soundbible.com (thanks Soundbible!)

Special Thanks

To Extra Credits, for alerting me of this jam. To Dan Emmons and Brett Cuttler for supporting me. And to you the player.

Also to my friends at Hearts of Oak, who were kind enough to post my game on their official facebook. If you like (Sid Meier's) Pirates, check out their project. I've written for it as well.