Memory Mayhem

In Memory Mayhem, you play as a tiny robot who is frantically working inside your computer’s processor to clear up your cache. As more and more data is dumped into the cache, you must work quickly to process the data and reduce memory leaks. Compute the target numbers to score points and clear up space.

Instructions for peasants(JKJK):

1. WASD to move
2. Space to pick up and drop blocks from the highlighted tile
3. Combine any 2 numbers to get 1 block equal to their sum
4. Computer the target number to make the block disappear
5. Numbers greater than 8 cannot be added
6. Don't get crushed by falling blocks

Intructions for computer science/engineering people:

1. Use good data structures
2. Make use of spatial and temporal locality
3. Avoid integer overflow
4. Avoid memory leaks

Ludum Dare Journal:

For this Ludum Dare I really wanted to adhere closely to the theme. When I think of "running out of space", claustrophobia is the first thing that comes to mind. I didn't want to interpret the idea simply as "playable area in the game decreases". For that reason I spent a lot of time just thinking about the topic and what would be fun.

I dismissed a lot of ideas that were good, but seemed to typical. I also tried to avoid playing with the words "running" and "space" so as to not dodge the topic. This came to this idea over many iterations and I really like it because it truly felt like a race against space(and time)

Despite my planning, my team decided to roll with another idea, and so we worked on that for 2 days. However we eventually felt that this new idea might not play out as we were imagining it and so my team lost motivation and eventually dropped out of Ludum Dare altogether. I still felt that I shouldn't waste the opportunity. I had been waiting for Ludum Dare 42 for quite a while, and had dismissed myself from a lot of my responsibilities to make time for the event.

So with a little more than 1 day left, I un-shelved my original idea. I wasn't worried too much about the scripting of the game, since I am a decent programmer. However, since I no longer had a team, I was worried about the art and polish that I had imagined for the game, and I am by no any means an artist. I could not find any suitable(and free) art for my game, so I had to learn to make pixel art in that same day. After reworking the art a few times, I finally had something half decent. All the audio is borrowed.

I am fairly happy with the end result. While my original idea was much more ambitious, and involved a few more mechanics, I think I was able to deliver on the look and feel of my brainchild.

This idea takes inspiration from computer engineering principles and the way processors and caches work. I hope this game comes across as unique and that you enjoy playing it.

Thanks for playing!

Update: -Attempted to fix the controls and movement.
-Rescaled spawn rate to adjust difficulty and increase playability.