An old water-balance lift, 1889. You pour water into the counterweight tank, it gets heavier and pulls the cage with miners up the shaft. Too much water and the cage slams into the top. Too little and it stops halfway.

Play: in the browser or on itch.io (there is also a Windows build)

Three trips. Keep people under your lamp so the floor stays level, stop at the ledges to pick up more, slow down before the broken teeth on the drum. The last trip is a bit different.

Controls

• Left mouse, drag up: water
• Right mouse, drag down: brake
• Mouse: the lamp, people walk to the light
• Left click: people grab each other and hold on (3 per trip)
• Click the small DUMP handle: empty the tank between trips
• Wheel: shaft map
• Esc: pause

Headphones help. The game starts with a short newsreel and a lesson, you can skip both.

About

Made solo in 48 hours for the Compo, Unity and Blender. Lifts like this really worked on water and a brake, no engine, so it fit Old Tech.

All the art, models and sound were made during the jam. The sound is generated in code. Before the theme was announced I already had my own crowd simulation code (the sim, a pixel renderer and a small synth), that is the base code. The game itself was made in the 48 hours.

Source: Counterweight_source.zip