This game was made as part of the 14th Pirate Software Jam.

Theme: It's Spreading

You are a machine with a single purpose; survive. Helpless is a single-player experimental simulation game designed to allow players to experience the existential dread of being a machine tasked to clean up its mess for an eternity.

What's spreading you might ask. Well the oil that keeps you alive!

Inspired heavily by the art piece “Can’t Help Myself” by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, currently on display at the Guggenheim in New York City.  https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812

Controls

Mouse: Left Click/Drag


Team lead and UI/UX: Justin Looman

Programmers: Sami Chamberlain, Iain Roach

Tech Art: Will Jeon

Artist: Claire Wang

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, HTML5
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(1 total ratings)
Authorsifaicgu, Iain-Roach, sciencedoge, WillyJeon, ursamajjor
GenreSimulation
TagsExperimental, Singleplayer

Download

Download
Pirate Software Jam Design Document.pdf 4 MB
Download
HELPLESS_WIN.zip 76 MB

Comments

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Cool idea! Funnily enough, I almost went with a game mechanically (not thematically) similar to this :) love the background image

A great tribute to the original art installation, as well as how damaging a bored audience can be. was a little hard to measure where the fail point was, but well done

This is a wonderful tribute to games, art, and games as art, I say. Here are some of the things I loved about your game: I loved purposefully pushing oil away from my robot arm just to be different. I loved the attention to detail in the menu section and the sound design/gfx. I loved how the audience pelt the robot with rubbish when they are bored with it. I can tell you put your soul into this game and I think you did a great job.

Some minor constructive criticism would be things like a) not spawning anywhere the player has *just* touched, so they get to feel the satisfaction of cleaning/scraping b) having the audience be more fervent fans when the player is doing well, c) have the player understand when their oil is low (i think thats how the player loses the game?)

I also find the controls a little inaccessible as I have some hand disabilities that make it a bit challenging to play for the amount of time it is asking me to.

Still though, great game! Very awesome.

(+1)

All great criticism that will defiantly be looked into if we spend more time working on the game. 

I can't get over how happy this game makes me. Wonderful idea, and incredible execution. 

Fantastic job! 

What a cool game. Whenever I see this art piece in a video online, it is always so mesmerizing to watch. Super satisfying to play. Love that the audience can throw objects into your oil!

Thanks

(+1)

Love this idea! So cool to see this art piece in game form, and excellent job with the fluid physics!

Thanks, we hope we did a good job representing the piece.