Nighty Night, Nosferatu

About the game

It is the end of the night, and Nosferatu has to get home before the sun comes up. The game is a platformer where light kills. A bright sun hangs at the edge of each level and casts hard shadows from every wall, ledge and bridge, and the only safe place is in the shade. As the sun moves across the sky, the shadows turn with it, so a place that was safe a moment ago becomes deadly, and you have to keep jumping from one patch of shade to the next to reach the exit of the level.

The shadows are the whole game, and they are drawn live: every platform blocks the light in real time, and the sky, the stars and the glow around the sun change as it moves. The levels add crumbling blocks, drawbridges and buttons, and gaps that are easy to fall into in the dark.

It was made in 48 hours by Shawn M. Moore (sartak) for Ludum Dare 50, whose theme was "Delay the inevitable". He made the pixel art, the sound effects and the music himself, and wrote the game in JavaScript with the Phaser engine and the illuminated.js lighting library.

Playing it here

The game runs in the page and works with a keyboard or a gamepad. It does not save. It is heavy on the processor because of the dynamic shadows: the author says that if it runs badly, you should wait in the game for a minute, because it lowers the quality by itself, or try another browser. The download is about 8 MB, most of it the four songs. Sound starts after your first click.

The author left two debug keys on, N and P, which skip to the next and the previous level. They work as a cheat for a level you cannot beat, and as a way to see the rest of the game.

Controls

Tips

Stay under cover. Look at where each ledge casts its shadow before you jump, and remember that the sun keeps moving.

Wait for a shadow to arrive. Sometimes the best move is to stand still in the shade until the next patch of shade reaches the next ledge.

Do not rush. The jumps are precise, and the shadows move slowly, so a short wait is often better than a risky jump.

Credits and licence

Nighty Night, Nosferatu was made by Shawn M. Moore (sartak) for Ludum Dare 50. The code is under the MIT licence. The page uses Phaser 3 (MIT), React (MIT) and other open source packages, and the lighting library illuminated.js by Gaëtan Renaudeau (GNU GPL v3 or later), which is served unmodified in its own file. The licence texts, the source of the whole page, the patch and the build script are linked from this page. In this version the credits box with links to the author's sites was removed from the page, and the page has a policy that blocks requests outside the site.

FAQ

The game is slow. The shadows are computed on every frame. Wait a minute while you play, since it lowers its own quality, or try another browser.

I cannot beat a level. Press N to skip it, as the author intended.

Does it save my progress? No.