Phew, it almost gave me a heart attack, but I did it! A game in 7 hours!

I've been wanting to get more in to game development for a while, and when I came across the Lux Jam it gave me the swift kick in the backside I needed to get going. Unfortunately, I saw the jam too late and realized I only had 7 hours to submit. After um-ing and ahh-ing for about 15 minutes, I decided I would make a go of it!

My initial idea was to have a horror game inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, with an author trapped in an inescapable room. The room would be lit with candles, which would be distinguished by an unseen entity and once all the lights were out...game over! My thoughts were to merely have it be how long the player can endure before the darkness gets them.

I wanted to save time on the art side of things, so I used some assets I'd purchased in the past to build the look of the game. Shadowed areas would be in black and white, and a clock would chime ominously in the background...thus I gave the game the working title "It Tolls For Thee". Unfortunately, I missed the game jam rule that purchased assets were not allowed, so after wasting 40 minutes, I scrapped this initial idea for something more streamlined, and with a proper objective.

I quickly built the corridor scene and light switches in Paint.net using various custom plugins, and sourced other art assets from opengameart.org. The sound effects I got from freesound.org. I developed the game in GameMaker: Studio.