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Predecessors
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About the game
Predecessors is a short, tense escape game set in the 13th century. You wake up in the dark at the left edge of a wide field, wearing a hat and a plain tunic, and the only thing you know is that you must reach the far right edge of the map. You can only see a small circle of the ground around you; everything else is black.
The ground does not stay still. Every second a bit more forest grows on the open land, and the more forest there is, the more pursuers show up: figures that look like you and have the same goal, which is to catch you. Hence the name, because they are the ones that came before you and did not make it. Once one of them is near enough, it follows you, and one touch ends the run. Somewhere on the field a wooden cross lies on the ground. Picking it up widens your light for a few seconds and slows your pursuers to a crawl, which is your best chance to break away.
So every run is a race: go straight to the exit and risk running into the chasers in the dark, or search for the cross first while the forest keeps spreading. Sami Heikkinen and Tero Jäntti made Predecessors for js13kGames 2023, where the whole game, with its music, fits in 13 KB.
Playing it here
Click Play, then press Enter on the title screen. Use the keyboard; there are no touch controls, so a computer is best. When "Run, hide and find the exit!" appears, start moving right. If you are caught, press Enter to try again. Nothing is saved between visits.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| ← → ↑ ↓ or A D W S | walk |
| Enter | start, try again |
A few things worth knowing
Time is against you. The longer you wait, the bigger the forest and the more pursuers. Do not stand still.
Grab the cross when you can. It lasts only four seconds, and it flashes when it is about to run out, so use it to get past a group instead of saving it.
Keep your distance. A pursuer starts following you from a good distance, so skirt around the ones you can see and do not walk straight past them.
Credits and licence
Predecessors was created by Sami Heikkinen and Tero Jäntti. The game is released under the MIT licence. It embeds the SoundBox music player (Marcus Geelnard, zlib licence); the full licence texts are linked from this page.