TerrorToma
A downloadable game
WARNING: This game contains body, biomedical and biological horror themes.
Not intended for children or those with a nervous disposition.
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STORY:
1989. You are Merith Anges, a sub species of a race known as "Sumans" who have robust immune systems that are able to contain and destroy infections before symptoms appeared. The only fault is that any contagion a Suman is infected with is able to spread easily to others in the incubation period, even those who recovered from the same strain. If a Suman dies and is not contained, their infection mutates and spreads from their decaying body, causing a pandemic.
This time, you're infected with a strange pathogen that's hijacking your body, putting your life on the line. The doctors put you in a hospital vessel in outer space to study and contain the infection so it won't spread to the outside world. If only they mastered the field of bravery.
The doctors chickened out at the last minute after a disturbing discovery about your condition, so you have to perform the microsurgery yourself. Using a special cyberdeck, you pilot a tiny drone inside your body to fight the infection. It works like one of those old arcade games, so it should be easy, right?
Are you dealing with an exotic pathogen, or something more sinister?
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INSTRUCTIONS:
Shoot viruses to regain a bit of health, don't attack red or white blood cells (but don't run into the latter or the walls), find the threat and neutralize it.
As this is supposed to be performed by a microsurgeon specialist, you need to guide the drone with precision. Wasting ammo, shooting at walls or anything that helps your body will cost you health, but there are other things in your body that you need either avoid or shoot to maintain your health, as your life force is slowly being drained by your illness. You better hurry.
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CONTROLS:
Up Arrow: Thrust
Left/Right: Turn
Down: Brake
Space: Shoot
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INFLUENCES:
This game uses the "Sit And Survive" theme in that it takes inspiration from Asteroids, Iron Lung and re-wraps the entire premise by taking cues the Invader Zim episode "NanoZIM".
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CREDITS:
Entry for Phisnom's #ToxicTerrorGameJam
(Fun Fact, this is my second time doing a GameJam, and the second time I took part of Phisnom's GameJam back in 2018 with the theme "Working at Freddy's" on Reddit!)
Made in GameMaker, inspired by the official "Space Rocks" template on YouTube
Pixeloid Font : ggbot.itch.io/pixeloid-font
Sound effects are composed in FL Studio using the PC-88/Sega Genesis Soundfont from Musical-Artifacts (NOTE: the soundfont is listed under "no license", which may have copyright issues due to some instruments and drumsets being lifted from Sonic The Hedgehog, Earthworm Jim and more.)
Some sounds are edited in Audacity
This game took me one week to make and the GameJam version only has one level. I hope to keep working on it after the event ends. Thanks for checking out TerrorToma and I hope to see the project reach its full potentional!
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Comments
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nothing more horrifying than a grim dystopian future where you have to do your own surgery and probably still have to pay an exorbitant amount of money for it.
Anyway, i really liked this one. The gameplay I would unironically call "surgical," with its emphasis on having to move slowly and carefully through the environment. Having your missed shots damage your health also adds to the tension quite a bit and really communicates that even the smallest mistakes count.
Your comment about the game being surgical is not far off! The gameplay of "TerrorToma" was inspired by the likes of "Microsurgeon" and "Laser Surgeon: The Microscopic Mission" from the 80's, and I wanted to make a "Fantastic Voyage" style surgery game of my own. I wanted to take the concepts from old games like this and breathe new life into it.
The "grim dystopian future" wasn't on my mind when I convinced the setting for it. The game was supposed to take place in an alternate past, but I could explore it further. The game already felt grim from the concept of dealing with a bizarre infection by yourself with no doctors to comfort or guide you, so there's more to get out of it!
There are some flaws I noticed in the gameplay like the tension being rather lax in its current difficulty, I wanted the player to feel more pressured as the health goes down, but I didn't have the time to tweak it in the right places. There are some features that I had to cut, but I'm looking to add them back in post-jam once I make it into a full-fledged game.
I hope to hear what Phil says about the game so I can improve upon it further!
that first part was more of a joke lol