Take The Spoils - Pixel Game Jam 2025 Edition
Pixel Game Jam 2025 Entry
#beginner
Title: Take The Spoils (from the dead)
Theme: From The Dead
You play as the Gravedigger who enters the cursed Pauper's Rest graveyard to steal from the dead to get enough gold to buy an antidote for Ghostrot for your ailing partner. Beware the undead that wander the cemetery!
🎮 How to Play
- Walk into the grave to dig out the coffin and steal the contents.
- Return to Granny Smyth to sell your loot and buy upgrades.
- Defeat the undead before they defeat you by walking into them.
- Once you have enough gold, but the antidote to heal your sick partner.
🎮 Controls
- Use the NUMPAD or WASD to move around (NUMPAD can move diagonally)
- Walk into graves to dig, enemies to damage and Granny Smith to enter the shop.
- Left Click on the shop items to buy.
- Press Enter to start the game or restart after dying.
Explore a lovingly handcrafted level featuring:
- 👻 Unique undead enemies.
- 🧩 Traditional Roguelike movement and combat.
- 🎵 Retro-inspired pixel art sprites and music.
- 🪦 A complete story of sacrifice to save the ones we love.
Credits & Attributions
Solo Developer: 👤 Indie Aidan Dev
Role: Design, Programming, Art, Writing, UI, Sound Integration
Art & Assets
- Pixel Art
- Sprites
- Environment
- Items
- Player Potrait
- UI
- Colour Palette
- Fonts
- Audio
- Music
- Sound Effects (NOTE: These were mostly removed to make the Itch Web version work)
- Gothic Fantasy Sound FX Pack Vol. 1 (Ovani Sounds)
- Horror & Suspense Sound FX Pack Vol. 2 (Ovani Sounds)
- Main Menu Skull Image
Tools Used
Itch.io Page Inspiration
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I really liked this I concur with some of the sentiments being made about certain aspects being confusing at first which you know its a 10 day jam so really impressive regardless, but once I got the hang of it I really liked it reminds me of sort of crypt of the necro dance style movement without the rhythm parts and yeah, I thought it was really charming. Love the main character design and art in general. Animations looked really good and was overall just a fun experience.
Thank you so much for checking it out! I really appreciate it.
The atmosphere is really nice, and the gameplay reminds me of various ascii based games or old dos games (I'm old, haha!). I think the core gameplay is solid (You're making a "extraction grave robber," a much cooler name than extraction shooter, isn't it? ). There's some natural risk-reward going on as player venture further away from the shop, which I think you should focus on deepening.
However, like other users said, the game can feel quite confusing for newcomers. The various issues I encountered:
So my suggestions are:
Thank you so much for playing the game and the detailed review!
I absolutely agree with all your points. My original vision was much closer to your suggestions to start, but I had to rush to get a working game in time for the game jam, so a lot of it got taken out unfortunately.
I do want to continue this project and my goal would be to have it be a traditional roguelike extraction game so the old-school vibe is a great compliment. With the shop being something outside the grave maps, you would sell what you got during a run and stock up on items for the next one.
The flashing player is actually the visuals cycling through the different entities on the same tile so you can see what is there if multiple items are on the same grid.
I really like the vibe that the art and audio bring to the table! I particularly like the portrait in the top-left too!
I had the same issue that another user mentioned, where the game froze when I tried to open the shop at one point. I must have opened it 10-15 times already, so it's odd it happened that time!
For me, it was also after having visited the shop just moments before - but I'm not sure if that's related or not!
Thank you so much for check out the game!
That is odd about the shop bug. I was having some issues with the sfx audio on attacks and gravedigging freezing the game, so I had to remove them entirely to get the web build to work in time for the jam, so if I had to guess it's a weird issue with the audio that plays.
I do want to continue this project at somepoint, but I'd likely restart to get rid of all the bad game jam code.
Cool game! Definitely a little confusing at first but much easier to get the hang of after a death or two. I had a bug that froze the game a few times, I think it was happening bc i was trying to open the shop after just closing it but I'm not sure. After replaying it a few times I was able to beat it!
The visuals look great! I think a good addition could be to add something so you can tell how many items you have in your backback while playing! Also when you are in the shop menu getting heals it would be nice to see your current health so you dont have to guess at how many you need to buy. Overall a great game I enjoyed it!
Thank you for playing the game! Those are good points, I would love to add more polish like that. Sorry about the freezing, I had not run into that issue with the shop but I'll check into it.
First playthrough I was confused as hell, but second playthrough it made sense and I got pretty far through. Nice work! I couldn't quite understand why the environment changed around me as I moved, but now I realise it was the shadow of war clearing. I thought at first it was an upper and lower level of some tiered environment lol.
I couldn't tell that my bag was full so I didn't know why I couldn't pick up some things.
Graphics were cool! Looks like you got some of them online, but they still all work nicely together and fit well.
Great work!
Thank you so much for checking out the game and taking the time to write a review. I really appreciate it!
Those are all great points. I had wanted to implement an inventory space indicator in the HUD, but ran out of time unfortunately!