Nestling Fears

About the game

You try to go to sleep, but something at the back of your mind is making its way to the front and wants more space. Nestling Fears is a top-down game about that thing. You are a small flame inside a dark, square arena framed by a border of tiny eyes, and your job is to stay in one piece.

The rule is written on the screen: do not touch the border or the enemies. The enemies are streaking eyeballs that fly across the arena from every side, in patterns that change from round to round. You have three hit points, shown as small flames at the bottom, and every touch costs one. Between rounds, short messages in a monospaced font speak to you from a large eye at the centre of the screen, and the border keeps closing in, leaving you less room.

Sebastian Dorn made Nestling Fears for js13kGames 2021, where the whole game had to fit in 13 KB. The drawings were turned into data with a small tool and the sound is synthesised by the code, with no outside library.

Playing it here

Click Play and then click inside the game, so that it can read the keyboard. Press Space to move through the opening messages and start the first round. Move with WASD, ZQSD or the arrow keys, or with a gamepad if one is connected. Escape pauses the game. The game does not use the mouse.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Stay away from the border early. It shrinks, so the arena gets smaller as the round goes on.

Read the messages. They explain what the next round will throw at you.

Take it slowly. Small, careful movements work better than running.

Credits and licence

Nestling Fears was created by Sebastian Dorn and is released under the MIT licence. The licence text is linked from this page.