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Don't Wake The Dead!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #11 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
| Mechanics | #17 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Fun | #19 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Overall | #25 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Music | #37 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Sound | #40 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Aesthetics | #95 | 3.583 | 3.583 |
| Story | #107 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game in total?
1
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
The provided TV & Graveyard Models. A free VFX pack from Unity Asset Store. Free Music & SFX from Unity Asset Store
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Comments
After some time a webgl error saved me from this strangely addicting game xD At first I thought "there isn't much happening" but somehow I couldn't stop playing :D It was weirdly fun, and the intro animation was great. Thank you for making this
Thanks for taking the time to give it a go and for leaving feedback! I originally thought the WebgGL OOM error was a real negative, but I hadn't realized that it could function as an anti-addiction device. Lol Every cloud has a silver lining and all that!
I would rate this game 5 stars, even judging on the main menu alone, it's just so good! So colorful, and juicy, and fun, and delightfully spooky! I loved almost every element of it (except maybe crashing after reaching the finish, but that's nothing). Very impressive work; the camera work and prop usage are super entertaining. The gameplay is interesting and unusual for an incremental game, and the progress feels very satisfying.
Great job!
Thanks so much! It's great to hear people enjoying what I've made! I really appreciate you taking to time to play and to leave your feedback!
the intro sequence was amazing, felt super smooth and polished. however i had a lot of trouble figuring out what i was actually supposed to do in the game. but the theme was well executed and the fact that you have different upgrade paths is very cool
Thanks a lot for playing, and taking the time to leave some feedback!
So simple, yet so entertaining! I'm loving it!
I can't ask for any more than that! Thanks for playing!
Cool idea in Don’t Wake The Dead! — turning static removal into a layered incremental feels fresh and thematic. I did hit a bug near the late rounds: the web build threw an out-of-memory (OOM) error just when I was about to push through. Also, the upgrade UI tooltips sometimes appear behind nodes, making them hard to read when the tree gets crowded.
If you’ve got a moment, I’d love it if you checked out my game and dropped a rating: /jam/gamedevtv-halloween-jam-2025/rate/3971977
— thanks so much and best of luck in the jam! 🎃
Hey, yes the Tooltip issue is just my accidentally changing the layer order when making last minute changes, so should be an easy fix. Thanks a lot for playing. I noticed you've made some updates to Hush Boy Hush, I'll try to give it another go if a get a chance later.
Well done! This is the most unique game I have seen in this jam so far. I really admire the risk you took with this one. The whole game is about aiming, but combining that with the skill tree and the main goal of wiping out all the flicks made it a well executed strategy game that is both satisfying and addictive at the same time.
I loved the intro and the music. Even the white noise did not bother me, which it usually does.
My only point is that the chromatic aberration while reading the “how to play” section gave me a real headache. Other than that, it was a really fun experience.
Thanks so much for taking the time to play, and leave your thoughts. A thanks for your kind words.
Yes the How To Play section was a last minute “oh crap I keep forgetting to add it in” things, and I ran out of time to re work the camera setup to avoid having the text so close to the edge of the screen, where the chromatic aberration is strongest, so sorry about that.
Never player an incremental game before and don't intend to now. The tutorial was well-made and the theme was massively integrated into the game. Did not recognize what it had to do with graveyards and waking the dead.
Because it's not my type of game, I was neither addicted nor was randomly clicking on static a lot of fun. But I see, for many, it was. And the random bat was nice.
Hey thanks for taking the time to play, and for leaving your honest opinion. The waking the dead concept is explained on the games itch page, I didn’t want to add a load of text at the beginning that the player was forced to read through.
I guess when we make anything creative we can just hope to leave some kind of lasting impression on those who experience it… I didn’t expect that to be putting you off an entire genre of game though! lol.
Thanks again for playing.
Fun game, and easy to play! I liked it a lot! I played until I got the browser error.
For balance - early on, the rounds seemed too short. It felt like I was spending more time in the upgrade tree than playing the game.
Later in the game, I had to do a lot of panning around to see all the available upgrades. Maybe the nodes could be drawn a bit smaller? I kept instinctively trying to use the scroll wheel to zoom out, like in blender! ha ha
Also, I wasn't sure if the bat was doing anything, besides just flying around.
Thanks so much for the feedback, I can completely see where you're coming from with regard to the balance in the early game. I'll bare it mind for any future updates, or future projects in general. Yes being able to scroll in the upgrade menu is definitely top of the list of additions.
Thanks for taking the time to play!
Awesome, fun game! Im a sucker for incremental games especially in jams and in each jam i find one which just takes up so much of my time haha. Great work all around, especially loved the sound effects and how the skill tree was implemented. Music was also very pleasing and went well with the atmospehere. The TV theme was really well integrated in the gameplay. Also awesome intro! Congrats on a great game :)
Thanks so much for your kind words. The nest bit a game jams is having the chance to share your creation with other people, and having people enjoy your creative endeavor is the best we can hope for.!
Really fun upgrade game :D Your take also fits really well with the TV theme, and I really like the animations in the opening sequence, very evocative.
I could probably spend hours playing this. The upgrades come quickly and you can immediately see their effects.
There is one technical issue that didn't affect my enjoyment of the game, but the upgrade tooltips appear behind the nodes, making some of them difficult to read.
Awesome game, well done!
Thanks for taking the time to play and review the game! It's great that you enjoyed it, and I'm glad that you could appreciate the pace at which the upgrades unlocked / became affordable. It was something a though about a lot, not wanting the player to have more than 2-3 rounds without some progress to show for it.
I think your point about the tooltip is very valid, and it could do with some more work to help legibility, although the tooltip should certainly be on top of the nodes, so that may be a minor bug i managed to introduce late on (probably just need to reorder the layers in the UI canvas a little) Thanks for the feedback.
I thought the take on the theme was really excellent and to turn static on a TV into an incremental game is very creative. I enjoyed everything about it - it was fun, it looked and sounded good and the mechanics and incremental choices were fantastic. It's easy to just play round after round.
I think the music on the main screen could be a bit different. While the vibe is good it seemed to be very short and repetitive and having to listen to it while going through the instructions got a bit distracting for me. The only other criticism I had was the screen you used to pick your upgrades didnt always display very nicely, but these are really minor points. Overall the polish is excellent and its a great entry. Excellent work.
Hey, thanks so much for playing, and leaving your thoughts! I'm glad you enjoyed playing so much. I agree that with more time the upgrade screen and UI get do with a little more polish, someone has suggested that being able to zoom in / out would be helpful, perhaps have a button to toggle on/off the other UI elements to minimize the clutter onscreen could help too.
You're right that the main menu music is a short loop. The reason was I was trying to go all in on a Main menu that transforms into the game, and didn't want a jarring change of music when the player pressed the Start button. That combined with the fact that the opening transition into the TV is timed to fit with the way the music swells meant that all i backed myself into a corner with what i could do with the music. Trying to be as seamless as possible and then be correctly choreographed to the cutscene...the trade of was looping the beginning of the music until the player pressed Start. Thanks so much for pointing it out, because as the developer I never spent long enough on the main menu to find it repetitive, so something I'll think about in future games for sure.
At first I was confused on how to play, but as soon as I start zapping them flecks and statics... I just can't stop myself, I was so hooked for about 30 minutes just cleaning up the screen from static. Until eventually I ran into an out of memory error, kinda wished I played the executable instead. The only thing I think could be improved is to have the ability to zoom out in the upgrade tree, to make viewing much easier (but that's just a nitpick!). Overall, I am addicted to the gameplay loop and will definitely play more of it for sure! what a gem :)
Hey, I love that you enjoyed it so much, Thanks so much for playing and, stooping to give feedback!
Yes thanks for the suggestion! The idea to be able to zoom out was on be list of stretch goals to add in the final day of the jam, but my time was taken up frantically trying an failing to solve the OOM error!!
Pretty unique game and fits the theme quite well. W game for real
Glad you liked it, thanks for playing!
Got totally addicted but should have read the comments first about the out of memory issue. This was a really cool take on the auto-clicker genre and I like the use of the helpful thing hurts you theme!
Delighted you enjoyed playing! Sorry about the OOM error it's the biggest regret for me this jam. Still I've learned more about the limitations of WEBGL builds with Unity, so hopefully I can plan to avoid the same fate in future games. Thanks for playing!
Oversimplifying a bit but webassembly has a 4GB memory limit, and in practice you can't even use that much. Also unlike a desktop build, WASM builds can't move data from memory into swap space as they run out of RAM.
What I'm getting at is it's quite possible that you have a memory leak in the desktop build too, it's just much harder to run out of memory in that environment.
ah ok, thanks a lot for that. I’ll look into it. I’d gone through minimising texture sizes, minimising the shaders and materials used, all to no avail… so thanks for the help.
If you want to get to the bottom of it, the most likely cause is some resource/class/object that you load or instance, maybe something you do every time you switch between scenes. If it's in your own code, you're looking for a logical error like a list you never clear.
I’ll take a look, thanks!
This is kind of addicting! The upgrade system is pretty neat. I actually got an OOM error on the web build right before I almost beat it.
Yes that's been the biggest disappointment for me... the dreaded OOM error., and it always shows up just a round or 2 before you can beat the game!! Thanks for taking the time to play and leave feedback!
Nice game, though it's very simple, the "tech tree" was keeping me in game for some time. Sadly gameplay itself is nothing special and even if we collect points faster with every upgrade we collect it's still bored me before I finished it.
I really loved the intro!!!
Hey, thanks for playing and leaving some feedback! I'm glad the tech tree was engaging enough to keep you playing, and that you loved the intro too! I appreciate what you're saying about the gameplay ultimately being very simplistic, but I chose to put my time into trying out some things that I hadn't played around with before, and trying to make something that was on theme and with a concept / premise that was coherent.
Thanks again for playing!
This was very cool incremental/auto clicker thing,
I only wished i would've read description before playing, i got secret ending "Out of memory game crash before the finale" :D it took me more than half an hour to reach it.
intro was very cool and transition to the actual gameplay got me surprised :D
tbh, i did not quite understand few things even while almost reaching finale,
what are purple specs?
gold specs?
I get why i must zap skeleton, but why must i zap bat?
and why timer started increasing at some point?
how does charge system work?
apart from this question and my overall confusion and the web crash, this was very fun experience
great game
Ah yes the orange CHARGED Flecks grant 0.1 seconds to your timer when destroyed, so that's why the timer start increasing at some point. The purple OVERCHARGED Flecks explode when destroyed dealing damage to surrounding Flecks and allowing for a cascading effect. Both are briefly explained in the How To Play section on the main menu or pause menu. I'd hoped to better explain them in the upgrade tree at the point of first unlocking them, but ran out of time whilst desperately trying (and failing) to fix the OOM issue on the WEB build.
As for the bat, he was the first enemy you encounter, so his purpose was simply to be a distraction and get in the way, nothing more than that and can be ignored if you dot get annoying be him!
Hope that explains some of the points of confusion. Thanks so much for taking the time to play, and leave detailed feedback!
Nice game. Good job on the economy balance. Ran into an OOM, otherwise probably would have played for an hour!
Thanks a lot! I'm sure the balance could be tweaked with more time, but I hope the sense of everything scaling up comes across, and gives that satisfaction of "make number go up!"
I really tried to ensure that you almost always had something to unlock or purchase after each round, and that just when it started to slow down, and you need 2-3 rounds to save up for the next thing, you manage to get another 2x currency and open up a new level of earning potential.
Glad you enjoyed playing, & thanks for taking the time!
I wish I had downloaded the Windows build. I learned the hard way that WebGL breaks :(
The game is very addicting and I'm really annoyed with the zombie. He keeps getting in my way, just leave me alone...
I have to clear the goddamn screen. Earn more money, clear more flecks, earn more, clear more.
I also loved the main menu, and the animations. How did you do that? I want to learn as well.
Overall a very solid and fun game!
Delighted to hear you enjoyed it so much, and sorry that pesky memory issues stopped you from enjoying the ending when you were so close.
As for the main menu, the camera transitions are done very easily using Cinemachine in Unity. You can install the package, and add the Cinemachine Brain component to the main camera, then make separate gameobjects with Cinemachine Camera components on them, and each time you enable / disable a camera it automatically switches, you can then control the priority and whether the camera should hard cut or smoothly transition. The main camera sequence that takes you into the game once you click the start button, is done using a Cinemachine camera that follows a spline like its on a rollercoaster track. It's the first time I've tried it and will definitely go back to experiment some more.
Thanks again for playing!
Ah, I see. Thank you for the explanation, I'll also experiment with it for sure.
This was a VERY creative take on the theme. Despite this being one step up from an auto-clicker, it was surprisingly fun. I played to the end and got every upgrade except the last damage upgrade before I beat it. Good music, good SFX. Really interesting premise. The skill tree was awesome.
I played the windows build, and I was able to beat the game, but it did start lagging towards the end each time a level started. It was also really hard to target the skeleton hands in time. It felt more like luck than skill there. The game also did crash when I tried to quit after winning.
Really creative game!
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it so much. Yes the windows version does seem to have some lag, which i didn't experience when testing the web build, trying to manage the 2500 flecks of static has certainly taught me a lot about optimization, with plenty more to learn.
I assume when talking about not being able to get the skeleton hand in time, you mean BEFORE it change the channel and refills the screen? That because you zapping the skeleton doesn't interrupt the animation or stop it from changing channel, it simply makes it move away, and allow you to see the full screen again. I think if i was to carry on developing the idea, I'd change it to allow the player to react quickly and prevent the Skelton from changing channel .
Thanks so much for taking the time to play the game to the end, and thanks for the feedback
Ok... that makes sense. I realized after chasing the skeleton away twice it would let me kill static in peace. I think my confusion came from sometimes the level timer ended when the skeleton came so I thought he was ending the run.
Also, being able to get the bat was amusing.
Yeah i found in playtesting that i would ignore the skeleton sometimes, and leave him there, knowing that i was never going to be able to clear the screen on that round, so didn't need to be able to see that corner, and save some time by avoiding him coming back a second time to bother me. (The joy of knowing how a mechanic works, because you programmed it i guess lol!)
Yes the bat was purely there to be an annoyance. Glad you could see passed the frustration to see the intended silliness of it.