Random Walk by nuzcraft
You are confused!! Inspired by Unfair Flips by Heather Flowers, this is a game about beating the odds.
The embed here is cutting off some of the screen. It's still playable, but you can't see all the messages. I recommend using the itch.io html embed. Sorry! I do not have time to resize it :sob:
Follow the path. Collect the Coin of Rehtaeh. Return to the Portal. It's only 10 steps, but can you persevere through your confusion to make it to the end!

Controls
- Arrow keys
- WASD
- Numpad
- HJKL
- Mouse click buttons
- Escape to pause
Credits
- Game by Nuzcraft
- Art by MRMO Tarius
- Font by Somepx
- Sounds by Kenny and Rubberduck
| itch.io | https://nuzcraft.itch.io/random-walk |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/random-walk |
Ratings
| Overall | 599th | 3.208⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 626th | 2.938⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 229th | 3.542⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 713th | 2.917⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 411th | 2.938⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 655th | 3.042⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 28🗨️ |


More interactive elements with the character would be nice when you're not going in the right direction, whether it's bonuses or penalties.
Congrats!
Random interesting thought - it would be fun to play with "chance of success" probabilities of less than 25%, so that the player has to figure out that it's better to NOT move in the direction you want. I had some deep thoughts about this and eventually realized it's not THAT deep, but still interesting!!
Quick note, the option of hjkl navigation made me smile, but it seems like the 'J' key doesn't move the character? Might be a little bug.
Nicely selected scope, and good implementation of your vision. I'm glad I had the chance to play it! :smile:
### Design Ramble
Quick disclaimer: I don't want to come across as too pushy, because I know this is your game - this is just me doing a lot of thinking out loud. I'll have opinions about design, but I know that it's just my perspective, definitely not intended to be presented as a authoritative. Anyway, on with the ramble.
The concept of Unfair Flips is very interesting to me, mostly as an introspective experience. A meditation on randomness, and the kind of unreasonable expectations that folks generally have about randomness.
What's especially appealing to me is that the core concept "flip heads 10 times in a row with this coin" intuitively sounds very hard to accomplish - the odds must be very very low, especially if you have a "bad" coin at the start. What's neat, though, is that even though I think the odds are bad, the reality of how bad the odds are is many, many times worse than what I imagine. Like, I don't have a good mental framework to imagine how bad it is - by default my brain has some baked-in assumption that it'll happen sooner or later, it just might take a little bit.
That gap - the fact that I think it's unlikely to happen, but I'm still overestimating how likely it is to occur - is super neat to me, and thinking about how I evaluate odds & probability is a fun result of interacting with that game.
In terms of mechanics, the function of this game is essentially the same - you have to win a series of "confusion flips" to get your character to move in the direction you want to win the game. If you win enough flips in a row (and don't accidentally press the wrong direction like I did a couple times :laughing:) the game is cleared.
My mental response to it, though, felt quite different. There are probably a lot of factors at play here; for example, when I control a character with directional inputs it doesn't feel like the kind of action that should be random. My experience with coins is that flips are 50/50 odds, but my experience with walking around in games is that (generally speaking) I move in the direction I want 100% of the time. Relatedly, usually when I'm walking around in the game, I don't need to take an arbitrary path to reach my goal - if I happen to reach it in one way or another, the movement has achieved its purpose.
I think these pieces of dissonance (walking direction normally doesn't feel random, pathing normally isn't strict in top-down walk-around-ey games) make the game feel more unfair & arbitrary than the coin flip game. When a coin flips tails, I can say "well, that's the way coins go". When I walk closer to my objective but not on the path the game prescribed & get reset, my instinctive response is "that doesn't seem quite right".
This doesn't *really* matter in a mathematical way (it's all just coin flips behind the scenes) but I think this kind of game / experiment is probably most interesting when it plays into & exposes fallacies in the player's flawed expectations. Though I have played plenty of games that involve a character walking around in a top-down view, the idea that the character moves randomly & that the character must follow a particular path are both unique to this game.
I can still have some fun poking the buttons & seeing if the character reaches the end, but I don't think it has the same kind of impact for me. Becomes a more general meditation on the Skinner box-type behavior, I guess.
There might even be some extra fun tension, getting that feeling of "I can't actually reach the coin, maybe I should just stop & cash out my XP" feeling along the way.
Of course, that would make it more game-ey and less of a probability experiment - might not hit the notes you're wanting.
I had other thoughts (maybe you flavor it as "the floor has a chance to break w/ each step) but they might not be the right way to go - there is an endearing quality to a character who just fails to walk in the direction they're supposed to over and over :smile:
At the end of the day, though, what matters most is your satisfaction with it. Thanks for indulging me in this too-long rambly pair of comments, and good luck on your future game-making endeavors!
I liked the randomness aspect pretty well, I couldn't lose focus because otherwise I was misinputing directions, I liked the rush of "oh no I'm having a really good streak right now!".
Incremental-wise, I feel that the upgrade paths could be more balanced - right now it was difficult (unless you had a really good run) to really 'customize' your upgrades - the only decisions to make were during such long streaks, where you could get greedy, increase your multiplier and hope you'll make another good step - or go 'safer' route with increasing your chances (or just step value)! I wish there were more choices to make during the regular grind. It could be done with changing the scaling of values so that you could take multiple tiers of one upgrade in a row - or maybe adding a secondary system that feeds off amount of moves, successful or not? Those are my ideas, though I'm not really sure they would work in the framework of the game.
Anyway, nice!
At first, I thought I was doing something wrong, but then it all clicked. The game is really frustrating at the beginning, yet somehow incredibly addictive
I love that you added sound progression when the character successfully steps several times in a row — that small touch really sells the feedback loop
Overall, the game feels stylish and polished, which is probably why I played it all the way through. I also liked the core concept — I haven’t played the references mentioned at the end, so the mechanic actually felt quite fresh to me
If I were to change one thing, I’d slightly increase the early success rate, since the initial balance feels a bit too tight