August 19th-22nd 2011 :: Theme: Escape
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The Grind is a simple game about escaping from work at a reasonable hour by avoiding responsibility.
The goal is to acquire as little work ("to-do's") as possible throughout your 9-5 workday. Wander around the cubicles and hide from the men in suits--if they're coming your way, that means they want to give you work to do!
Use the arrow keys to move, space to start, and escape to exit.
Gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKPY5R4reJY
The game and assets are licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL. Enjoy!
Downloads and Links
Ratings
| #71 | Community | 3.30 |
| #83 | Humor | 2.75 |
| #115 | Coolness | 5% |
| #194 | Theme | 3.16 |
| #226 | Innovation | 2.84 |
| #340 | Graphics | 2.37 |
| #371 | Audio | 1.00 |
| #384 | Overall | 2.42 |
| #446 | Fun | 1.74 |
Comments
Love the idea, but I feel powerless to really get an effective strategy going. The suits move more or less move randomly so I end up hiding at one spot for a long time.
It's an innovative theme, but as other commenters have said it felt pointless hiding in a cubicle all day. Although I imagine that's what a lot of bored office workers feel, so perhaps you achieved your aim!
I also wish there was a way to work off the TODOs! My high score was 6.
Can compile, but can't play it on Arch Linux 32 bits... Whenever I press any arrow key it stops working. Here's the console output:
└┌(%:~/sandbox/ld21/Deraj/Linux/thegrind-0.1)┌- ./thegrind
ERROR: [string "TheGrind/TheGrind.lua"]:171: attempt to call method 'reset' (a nil value)
ERROR: [string "TheGrind/TheGrind.lua"]:1277: attempt to index field 'eventHandlers' (a nil value)
If you need any help debugging this, please PM me on IRC (N0_Named_Guy)
Many apologies, N0_Named_Guy, the source tarball specifies a required version of radius-engine of 0.7, but it actually requires radius-engine 0.8 which is currently only available from the Git repository (git://radius-engine.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/radius-engine/radius-engine).
Sorry for letting that slip in. I think I can actually remove the dependency on radius-engine 0.8 without affecting the game. I'll try and do that tomorrow.
This is a brilliant interpretation of the theme. I am *ahem* I mean I have coworkers who are experts in cubical ninjitsu.
N0_Named_Guy (or anyone else compiling from source), I've uploaded a new source package that only depends on radius-engine-0.7.tar.gz (which can be found here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/radius-engine/files/). Thanks for the heads-up, and sorry for the trouble!
I like the idea, but it could be taken much further, like a full day of avoiding work in various ways instead of idling in corners. Some variety would help.
simple idea, executed well. a bit more direction would have been good though!
Nice idea, but quite boring implementation, suits often seen me around corner, gameplay quickly devolved to hiding in one cubicle and then hoping I'd move away if suit was coming, but since they move randomly and there's too much of them...
Points for theme and some for innovation, but overall just boring.
Woohoo 59 To-Do items FTW! Neat interpretation of the theme. You should take it a step further and give the player a tranquilizer gun to take out bosses from a distance (and make it so the bosses have to get closer to you to give you work). Changing levels would have been nice too.
I'd really love to see this game developed further, I think it has a lot of potential :)
Thanks, everyone for taking the time to play and comment. I generally agree with your feedback. Namely, the gameplay did not reach the level of completeness I had hoped for when I set out.
Regardless, I'm proud of what I accomplished and am looking forward to the next competition :)
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Neat idea, but perhaps a more clear goal, or somewhere you had to get to in order to beat a level would've made it more interesting than just hiding in a cubicle the whole time! :D