TidyHomebound is a time management strategy game where the player manages everyday household chores. For people with disabilities, especially those that impact energy or mobility, completing these tasks can be a daunting task. To some, it can feel like everything is piling up at an unstoppable rate, and by doing the chores they're just delaying the inevitable.

This game adapts the concept of Spoon Theory to represent energy to do tasks. The player starts the day with a few spoons, as well as a small number of emergency spoons they can use if they really need to. The ability to do tasks is heavily limited by available spoons, and the actions you make one day might have an impact on how many spoons you have for the next.

The game requires you to balance a limited number of spoons, an array of household tasks, and the need to perform self-care, as well as making trade-offs about how what you do today will affect what you can do tomorrow. The aim is to survive for as many days as possible.

How to Play

• Drag spoons to chores that need doing to do them
• Drag a spoon to the player in the bed to gain Self Care
• Multiple spoons can be placed on one chore to go faster, as bigger ones can take some time
• Red spoons are Emergency Spoons, they can each be used once per day and reduce your spoon count by 1 the following day when used
• If chores go undone for too long they start affecting your coping bar; the longer you leave it the more it will take
• If your self care is below half, you lose coping points faster and start with less spoons the following day
• You lose when the coping bar runs out
• The game gets progressively harder each day
• Try to survive for as many days as possible

LudumDare Notes

Hey! I haven't made a game in nearly 7 years now, so I thought joining in on LudumDare Extra while I had a few days off work would be a good way to get back into it. I partially used this opportunity to learn how to make pixel art, so there are probably a few different styles used throughout the various artworks of the game as I learnt and experimented with different things. Both the background music and font aren't mine, however everything else in the game was made by me.

I do plan on partially continuing this game post-LudumDare, mostly just a polish pass based on the feedback I'm hoping to receive. I'll publish any of those updates on the game's homepage.

To give credit to the authors of assets I did not make,

• Font: DOGICA by Roberto Mocci
• Background Music: "Safe At Home" by marcelofg55

Screenshots