Heat signature
You hide behind the rubble and watch the kid, who listens for drones. Vigilant, focused, and obedient; not curious or joyful like kids used to be. Was it worth it, leaving a broken homeland? The border is close, just one more push. Just avoid the machines.
Gameplay
Your goal is to cross the border without being evaporated by killer drones. You’re safe as long as you remain hidden behind the buildings. Oh, and one more thing — there’s a kid, so 'you' is plural.
Use the arrow keys to move the character
Press Z to call the kid
Remove the plug to end the oppression
There are two endings, indicated by captions
Notes
Heat signature was made for Pico-1k 2024 jam with particular requirement of game being compressed into at most 1kb.
Uncompressed source along with comments is available here.
About me
I've been using PICO8 for couple of years but created mostly tweetcarts on Twitter. I am fascinated by idea of extrapolation of both visual effects from tiny code and context backstories from short description.
This is great! Love the look and feel. Very original :-)
Plays fine in the browser (Brave v.1.69.160 - Mac OS X Monterey) but crashes my Mac OS X version of Pico-8 every time. Very strange. Any ideas as to why much appreciated.
Cheers
OK, I have found the culprit - it's ?"⁷s000" that crashes Mac's latest pico-8 player. It seems that playing sound with p8scii with sound speed 0 is wrong.
this game makes me sad. i feel like this is what wartorn kids have to deal with and stuff.
10/10 for a simple yet, complex game. full of emotion.
it's what hideo kojima would've wanted.
@unstablemexican88 thanks. initially wanted to make this game about sacrifice so only one of the characters would pass the border. but then reconsidered as finishing it would be to bitter and upsetting.
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