Coming soon

About This Game

Simulator Survivors is like Survivors, except it tests your navigational skills, reflexes, and resilience under pressure. It is punishing, hilarious, physics-enhanced arcade action with social sharing components.

There are no skill upgrade interruptions: you become increasingly stronger, faster, better (but not harder) by collecting color-coded gems dropped by inexplicably disgruntled enemies.

Maps are fully traversable, three-dimensional play spaces. You can jump, push, and dislodge physics objects. But so can your enemies.

Your deaths are painfully enacted by ragdolls, with your corpse dropping valuable meta currency. Collect it in the next run! A motivational AI narrator ensures you always feel well-informed and accomplished.

The Dead - Mourned or Desecrated

Worthy corpses are sent to heaven (The Cloud™), in exchange for another player's corpse of similar worth. Players may edit the obituary before a corpse's transgression.

If a cloud corpse is successfully "downloaded" during a run, the game pauses for a moment of silence. You'll honor the corpse in its final, disfigured pose while reading the poignant obituary. Perhaps you'll even shed a laugh.

You then have a choice:

Mourn The Dead

By offering condolences: add an item of your choice to the corpse's 3D representation, and whatever value you wish to add from your wallet.

The corpse and your contributions are sent back into the clouds, awaiting the next player. Your name will forever be inscribed as a condoler. There may be additional remunerations.

Desecrate The Corpse

By robbing its accumulated value, minus fees, fines and taxes as applicable and arbitrarily chosen. The game will celebrate the deductions.

A desecrated corpse will be remembered but is no longer downloadable by other players - it has been looted, stripped of its worth and dignity by some greedy, selfish individual. Whose despicable name shall forever be inscribed as its desecrator. There may be further penalties.

Leaderboards

The Leadercorpse lists actively mourned corpses. The Rememberboard lists desecrated, decaying corpses. The more condolences and worth, the better. How long will your corpse's life after death last?

Players themselves are ranked by various contribution metrics: corpses, condolences, desecrations, worth, etc.

The Disclaimers

A corpse's body pose is solely the result of game physics and subject to plentiful random chance. Any resemblance with real-world symbols or persons is entirely accidental, but hilarious.

No dead are being harmed in the making of this game. There have been no complaints filed thus far.

Cloud functionality is designed to minimize cloud usage fees. Cloud features remain subject to change during Early Access so the game can remain strictly buy-to-play. 

The Lore

The game's lore is to mock formulaic games.

My vision is: don't tell a story! Let it emerge. Let my subconscious be the guide. Let players participate.

There's a deeper meaning already surfacing. I refine every detail until it feels right how it plays, looks, sounds, and feels.

The game is considered a "simulation" of sorts. This frees it from the clutches of tried and tropes (high fantasy, science fiction, dystopian worlds, etc. etc.).

I have all intention to asset flip through the entire Synty Studios catalogue to create a content amalgamation that is matched only by child's play. Fortunately, I'm pretty damn childish.

The True Backstory

Wait, that means you're still reading this? Wow! I bow before thee, most valued potential customer.

While building a playable demo for my Unity asset I accidentally stumbled upon a surprisingly fun and addictive core gameplay loop.

I really just wanted to mock the survivors-genre on the side when I thought "Hmm, why not fully automate upgrades?". I've come to hate the stop-and-go anti-flow pattern. Those interruptions are awful! I'm a big fan of Brotato, but its individual waves are too short, its sessions devoid of anything worth remembering.

Then I wanted to have audio but didn't want to sift through enormous audio libraries. Instead, I picked up my microphone and just voiced the progression, monotonously. Then made it sound robotic. I was shocked how hilarious this made the game feel.

I added physics objects because ... why wouldn't I? Physics is fun and heavily underutilized, especially in Survivors games. Plus it's completely harmless to do so in that genre. Right? Well, for the most part. It does add tension of the unexpected always lurking to happen, throwing you off.

I threw IK animations in because it's faster to create wonky procedural animations than to integrate dull stock animations and setting up animation statemachines and blend trees, then debugging the inevitable glitches. IK animations allow for much more dynamic behaviour and are a perfect fit for the physics chaos.

Then I didn't want to end runs with a "Game Over". Instead, celebrating player deaths spectacularly through ragdolls. It's poignant: you didn't survive, but at least you get to revel in the pain. And then I added blood pools because I enjoyed how it perfectly mismatches the synthetic, sterile Synty assets. At that point the title "Simulator Survivors" suggested itself.

Add some day-night cycle, but fast and colorful. With matching hard shadows. And light up the enemies. And a spotlight tracking the player because, hmmm, it's just a simulation right?

Within two weeks I had accidentally created a hilariously frantic core gameplay loop I totally didn't see coming. That put me in a troublesome spot: Now what??

Improve and publish, of course! That process was just too much fun and highly productive. That decision is to the detriment of my Unity asset. But I found confidence in me enjoying the game a lot.

Perhaps Simulator Survivors has a chance of becoming a decently valued contribution to gaming history. In the "like no other" niche. At least I'll have converted significant real world currency into a creative statement. That's ... very meaningful.

Your Job, Right Now!

While you're anxiously awaiting simulated deaths, WISHLIST Simulator Survivors as an INVALUABLE SACRIFICE to the services provided by the clouds!

Buy the game when it becomes available. It keeps my budgies fed, my plants watered, and my days filled with creative joy!