Static Man by tifu
Static Man is a survive the night style game. A malicious entity is roaming your house looking to kill you, it can only be slowed down with light, your only hope is to survive until dawn by feeding every piece of fuel you can find into the furnace to keep the lights on and keep the monster at bay! Having lights on will slow the entity down as it walks through a room, but will consume more power.
Controls: WASD - Move around Mouse - Look around E - Interact Mouse button - Use axe (once acquired)


[Issues: Collision with the axe is a little bit finicky with some objects, mostly tables and wooden doors, if you aren't getting the hit (there will be a sound) then try stepping away a bit or facing more up or down. Every difficulty is possible, but I recommend playing on Normal.]
[Tips: The keys might cause confusion - ideally they would have been colour coded. The "store key" unlocks the door in the corridor, the "kitchen key" unlocks the two doors between the furnace and the kitchen, the two front doors only open at dawn. Finding the key, getting the axe, and smashing up everything made of wood to stick in the fire, is the way to survive. Wood gives more fuel than paper - but paper can be picked up before you have the axe: paintings and books.]
Game was created using the standard First person controller asset that comes with Unity.
[Edit] I've uploaded a video walkthrough of normal mode, don't watch unless you don't mind having the whole playthrough spoiled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptci2_tqusQ&
| Windows | https://blackmoth.itch.io/ld39-static-man |
| macOS | https://blackmoth.itch.io/ld39-static-man |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/static-man |
Ratings
| Overall | 586th | 2.75⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 518th | 2.75⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 518th | 2.65⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 306th | 3.55⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 393th | 3.05⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 484th | 2.056⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 96th | 3.6⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
In my tries I couldn´t manage to accomplish much, even in normal mode.
Controls work well, the graphics are fine too.
Improvements can be imagined at the gameplay itself. The Ghost was in my opinion a little to fast to get things done.
Nevertheless, a very nice entry!
I do have to agree that it was just too darn difficult even in normal mode. I tried and I tried, but never managed to survive for more than a minute, and I never managed to find the axe either. :c The description gave me the impression that there was only one "entity" moving about, but during actual gameplay I felt like there were at least two of them, because when I got to the room with the store key, it didn't matter if I tried to go back the way I came or move on; it was there anyway.
One thing I tried to be clever about was to wait for the entity to enter the room with the key on the table and after it turned out the light using the switch near the kitchen door, I'd wait for it to cross to the middle of the room, and turn the light on using the switch at the other end of the room and then run for it back through the kitchen, but it seems it doesn't need to use the switch to turn it off, only be in the same room? I guess changing that would've been a neat way to modulate the difficulty a bit. And like you said yourself, give the player a bit more of a head start, and maybe make the entity move a little slower (especially in normal mode).
I feel like this is something worth working on beyond the jam, because with playtesting and more time spent, I think it could be really interesting, and I'd be happy to try an updated post-jam version!
I had other ideas that never made it in... I had a run button until the last hour or so of the comp. But I couldn't get stamina done in time, so it made the game far too easy. I had an idea of having high powered lights (like on tripods) in a few spots that would use large amounts of power, but knock the entity out of action for a while, the entity would turn on some of the devices occasionally (the cooker/shower/radio) so you'd have to run around turning them off to save power - I wasted a lot of time modelling those items even though I didn't end up having time to code the effect they would have... yeah, bad planning on this one ^^;
I'll think about a post compo version, if I could get all that stuff put in it would probably make it playable D;
After I played it a little more, I ended up not being able to survive the night. That static man thing has too many hax, going through tables and all.
Anyway, it's nice to see a horror game. While I personally didn't find it that scary, mostly because of the lack of sound, it's a valiant effort considering it's a compo entry. Good job!
Keep up all the good work and good luck. :)