The Burdened Raid

About the game

The Burdened Raid begins with a joke: on his way to raid the most infamous dungeon in the land, our brave hero realises he forgot to bring a bag. He shrugs and decides to carry the treasure in his arms. That is the whole idea of the game, which was built for a jam whose theme was "the more you have, the worse it is": every treasure you pick up is drawn as a growing pile on your screen, so the richer you get, the less you can see.

You walk through a maze of stone corridors in a deliberately low-resolution first-person view, with pixelated walls, fog and a sword that sways at the bottom of the screen. Doors need keys, levers open hidden walls, ladders lead down to the next area, and slimes, bats, flying skulls and worse things wait in the dark. Fight them with your sword, grab the loot they guard, and decide how much you are willing to carry before the pile gets in the way. When you finish, the game shows your time and the amount of loot you took.

It is a short game written by one person in a weekend, and it feels like one: simple, a bit rough and quick to learn, with a good dungeon mood from the fog, the music and the sounds.

Playing it here

Click Play on the page, wait for the game to load and choose Play in its menu with Enter. In the menu, W and S (or the arrow keys) pick an entry and A and D change the difficulty (Easy to Insta-Death), the display mode (Standard, Retro, Old School or the one that hurts your eyes) and the mouse sensitivity. The story text shows first; hold Space to read it faster. Click on the game once to let it capture the mouse and press Escape when you want to get it back. The game makes no request to any other site and does not save anything.

Controls

Tips

Fight in the corridors. Enemies come at you one at a time in narrow passages, which is much easier than in an open room.

Do not hoard. Your view gets covered by the loot you carry, so try to look around and plan your route before you pick up the next treasure.

Try another display mode. The default Retro look is blocky on purpose; Standard is sharper if you prefer it.

FAQ

Is there sound? Yes, music and effects. Turn your volume down a little: the music starts quiet and fades in.

Does the game save? No. It is short, and each run starts from the menu.

Can I play on a phone? No, it needs a keyboard and a mouse.

Credits and licence

The Burdened Raid was made by Sigve Rokenes (evgiz) for Ludum Dare 40 and is free software under the MIT licence. This browser edition moves the build to a current libGDX and GWT, makes the screen fill the window and replaces the bitmap font (an export of a typeface without a licence) with one rendered from Jacquard 12 (SIL Open Font License 1.1). The game uses libGDX (Apache License 2.0). The licences and the recipe of this build are linked from this page.