Manually counted Reference GC by sebbernery

[raw]
made by sebbernery for Ludum Dare 58 (COMPO)

C programmers are right: memory management is too tricky to a machine. In this game, you will be trained to become a truely functional memory manager.

Capture d’écran du 2025-10-05 23-58-36.png

There is a tutorial in the game but here is a recap: * Select a block and stay pressed to form a group. When the group has the required size, assign a color to it. * When programs ask for memory, select a group and click on the check button on the notification to assign the memory to the program * If a program reads in a memory not allocated or allocated to an another program, it crashes. * From the third level, a program can have multiple pointer for the same memory block with instruction "New Ptr". If a pointer is freed, it doesn't mean the pointed memory is safe to reuse. All pointers have to be freed to reuse a memory address. * If a program close, you can reuse all its memory.

Made with: * Haxe with HaxeFlixel and ESpir (custom engine) * Vim and tmux * Inkscape * 1bit Dragon

Postmortem (in french) : here

Timelapse : here

Post ludum update: * Fixed a bug where the second level didn't finish correctly

Ratings

Overall 95th 3.452⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 113th 3.238⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 9th 4.262⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 22th 4.143⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 102th 3.524⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Audio 84th 3.361⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Humor 77th 3.158⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 141th 3.048⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 13🗳️ 12🗨️

Feedback

Sthor726
Oct 05th · 22:44 UTC
Super cool idea! Forces you to keep track of a bunch of things at once which is very entertaining
AppoxGames
Oct 06th · 00:25 UTC
Not sure if i completed the game in the correct order but either way it was a interesting concept. Well done!
Benjamin Gare
Oct 06th · 17:11 UTC
Neat concept. Programming in C is easy. Big memory big prizes. I love it!

Good game. Thank you.
02FC
Oct 06th · 22:22 UTC
Like the idea of garbage collector as game mechanics! I would like tasks to be automatically marked as complete when I... complete them :) Anyway, great work. Would love to play fully featured game like this.
kassanu
Oct 06th · 22:50 UTC
Fun idea and game. Would love to see this expanded on into a full game like Zachtronics games.
F1Krazy
Oct 07th · 13:47 UTC
I'm not sure if I failed? I got to 543 points during Level 2 and then the game just kinda stopped giving me tasks and just sat there doing nothing. This is a good game, with a clever interpretation of the theme and a lot to keep track of without feeling overwhelming, but a little more feedback as to how well you're actually doing would be appreciated.
OldDog
Oct 08th · 13:50 UTC
A very creative and deep game. Although it takes some time to understand the game mechanics, it’s extremely fun once you get into it. Looking forward to a more complete version!
LDJam user 280624
Oct 09th · 11:13 UTC
Brilliant! I was also thinking about GC during the brainstorming at the start of the jam, but couldn't come up with anything interesting. You pulled it off! Pleasant graphics, engaging gameplay, and a great execution of the theme
VikFX
Oct 09th · 23:27 UTC
The game stopped giving me tasks after a while, but I still enjoyed it. The concept is simple but engaging.
Jimbly
Oct 10th · 00:02 UTC
I also stopped getting tasks on Level 2 at around 600 points after the last program closed and nothing more happened, not sure if it was a game bug (I did click the check to dismiss the program without actually un-coloring the memory map, but the tutorial seemed to indicate that was fine / just for me anyway...)
🎤 sebbernery
Oct 10th · 08:46 UTC
@f1krazy @vikfx @jimbly Hello, thank you for your review and the bug report, it helped me to find the issue ! I have made a quick fix to avoid being locked in the second level !
LDJam user 384191
Oct 10th · 09:46 UTC
Cool idea, and a very original take on the theme! Having to keep track of several tasks at once gives the game a very "Overcooked" feel (which makes me wonder what this would look like as a multiplayer game). I think it would be interesting to see the concept expanded with other constraints and mechanics. Anyway, very nice game (et la référence à QUALIOPI m'a fait sourire :smile:)
thaDev
Oct 10th · 18:31 UTC
Cool concept! I had trouble figuring out what to do to actually keep going, but i'm sure thats more of a me problem. I love the simple graphics used!
cogcomp
Oct 10th · 18:48 UTC
Reminds me of the old defrag view in Windows.
lunarDust
Oct 19th · 19:02 UTC
very cool idea, it was fun to play. love the simple graphics and relaxing music.
LDJam user 378081
Oct 19th · 21:00 UTC
Not sure how to recover when the program crashes? So I guess I didn't understood everything :-(
auxiliarymoose
Oct 20th · 05:07 UTC
This is super cool! I can imagine something along these lines could be a great teaching tool for illustrating how memory management works going into other topics like virtual address spaces, memory compression, file caches, etc. Maybe also gamemodes focused on throughput vs latency vs efficiency...

It does seem the game got stuck at one point with the following in the console:
src/Program.hx:188: BUG HAPPENS

But in any case it was fun playing :-)
HomoLudens
Oct 20th · 08:51 UTC
Ah! I can see the passion that went into this game. Great work! I just didn't fully grasp the depth of the mechanic