Spooky Attic

Spooky Attic

Try to stay alive until dawn by avoiding the ghost while collecting gems.

Photosensitivity warning: The border flashes when the player is hurt or wins the game and there are also random flashes of lightning.

Controls

	Keyboard	Xbox controller
Movement	WASD/Arrow keys	D-Pad
Flashlight	Spacebar	A
Pause	P	Menu
Fullscreen	F
CRT filter	C
Music	M

Story

On a dark and stormy winter's night you sneak into the old abandoned mansion.

Local legend says there is a fortune in gems hidden there, guarded by the ghost of the former resident.

You thoroughly search all the rooms but find nothing. The last place to check is the attic.

Just as you climb up into the attic, a flash of lightning streaks across the night sky followed by a loud clap of thunder and the trapdoor you entered through slams shut!

You hear a ghostly moan eminate from somewhere above. Nervously you begin to search the SPOOKY ATTIC...

How to Play

Stay alive until dawn by avoiding the ghost while also collecting gems.

The ghost will only be visible when it is in the moonlight from an open window, your flashlight's beam, or a lightning flash.

You will automatically open windows as you approach them and the ghost will close them as it passes by.

Shine your flashlight on the ghost to startle it and make it run away.

If you are touched by the ghost while it is not startled you will lose a heart. Lose all 3 and it is game over!

Occasionally instead of a gem a replacement battery for your flashlight or a heart will appear.

Points

1 - Shine flashlight on ghost

10 - Open a window

100 - Gem

200 - Battery (if flashlight is fully charged)

500 - Heart (if you already have all 3 hearts)

Background

Spooky Attic was made in my spare time over the last month. I was aiming to recreate the feel of an early 1980s 8-bit single screen platformer using PETSCII graphics, similarly to my previous title Back 2 Nature.

I came up with the core game idea a while ago of having a ghost enemy that would only be visible when it passed an open window or was in the beam of the player's flashlight. Since it was approaching October I thought now would be an appropriate time to finally make it into a game. The concept seemed to be a good fit for a single screen platformer. I found designing an interesting looking player character at that scale to be tricky though, due to the limitations of PETSCII character art.

This is the first time I have created 'music' for one of my games. I used Bosca Ceoil Blue, which is the modern version of Terry Cavanagh's simple to use Flash music making app Bosca Ceoil remade in Godot by Yuri Sizov. As you can probably tell, I have no musical training and so the results are pretty basic! Still, I think they fit the vibe of the game.