Submission for Game Jam

'Mundane Jam (8 bits to infinity) 2021'

Game Jam Rules:

Has to be a game about a mundane job.

Theme (optional):

Decay.

Team size:

1.

Game Engine/language:

TIC-80, written in LUA.

Description:

You are a cleaner returning to work after the lockdown is lifted.

You must clean the decaying office area where the office workers left all of their rubbish and trash around before the lockdown.

Nobody is supposed to be back at the office yet but... that one "Antimasker" you know, the one who ignores all of the guidelines, is ADAMANT that they MUST run around the office the day prior, maskless, whiles you're just trying to do your job.

Your goal is simple, avoid the antimasker and clean the office!

Once it is clean you can finish your shift and go home!

Don't let it infect you! You don't get paid enough to put up with this! Go go go!

Controls: 

Arrow keys to move.

Z to start game.

Escape key will open a small menu where you can click a restart option.

About the author:

Hello! I'm Kouda, a first year, mature student at Manchester Metropolitan University, studying games technology. 

We just started to learn LUA via the TIC-80 games engine a couple of weeks ago. I wanted practise and thought I'd use it for this games jam! I had a lot of fun making it.

I hope whoever plays this enjoys :D

Twitter: @Kouda_Ha

What I learned/self reflection:

I tried to make the office as varied as possible, which was very hard with the limited amount of pixels and colours, so it mainly forced me to have a bigger imagination that I thought I had lol.

The same with the characters, I tried to make a normal office worker/cleaner with a blue facemask (Player) and the Antimasker I wanted to be a bit like a smelly zombie because the main premise is they infect you if you're caught. I had to change the Antimasker a lot as I used too many pixels for the smelly lines look and when it ran around it just looked like a green blob, now they're more humanoid and with minimal (but still effectively gross looking) stink lines lol.

(Not really an Easter Egg but I love Daruma, and the AI "Antimasker" was making it get stuck in a 1x1 gap, so I made a 1x2 Daruma and put him there to stop the AI getting stuck, and who doesn't want an office Daruma?!? Nobody that's who!)